


Smoke

by BurningTea



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Are you getting a Hannah theme? There's a Hannah theme., Bamf Hannah, Demon Dean Winchester, F/F, First Kiss, First Time, Hannah deserved better, Hannah saves the day, Hurt Castiel, Knight of Hell related, M/M, Post-Darkness, Post-Lucifer!Cas, reference to Demon Dean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:12:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 27,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6287788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Darkness, after Lucifer, Hell is leaderless and reeling. The closest thing they have to an heir to the throne is a hunter tutored by Alastair, befriended by Crowley and marked as a Knight. That Dean's worked to escape all of that means nothing, and he finds himself stalked by demons who are determined he'll come back to them. </p><p>Dean and Castiel are trapped, Castiel is mortally wounded, and Sam can't find them. Enter Hannah, because she is our Queen. With a side-order of Bela, because I am still bitter at her arc being cut so short.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExpatGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/gifts).



> This is me setting myself another writing a fic in 24 hours challenge, as I did with Feathers. That seemed to work out okay. As I plan on mainlining Daredevil Season 2 tomorrow, term just finished and I am so tired my eyes feel like they've been boiled, we'll see how this goes. :)

Dean twisted his body, feeling the pull in his stomach muscles and down through his thighs. No dice. He couldn’t get enough leverage.

“Dean.” 

Cas’ voice was weak, far too weak, and he’d pretty much stopped moving. His eyes were still open, though, just a glimmer, and fixed on Dean. 

“Can it, Cas,” Dean said. “I can get free.”

A faint crinkle of Castiel’s brow was all the response that got. The guy had made his opinion clear an hour ago, back when Dean had come to with his arms stretched above his head and his wrists circled in iron. Bespelled iron. Cas had spilled such an in depth, doom-laden description of the damn things that it had taken Dean nearly twenty minutes to realise Cas was clutching his stomach, and that light was seeping out past his fingers.

It wasn’t just the chain round his neck keeping Cas in place.

Another attempt got Dean nowhere. Balanced on the balls of his feet to get any purchase at all, he just couldn’t make it work. Besides, Cas was adamant that the spells etched into the manacles would hold Dean until someone released him, and Sam didn’t even know where they were. Dean didn’t know where they were.

He’d asked Cas if his angel-GPS was working, and Cas had grimaced and looked away. Not that they had any way to get a message to Sam if Cas had known.

Dean thew a glance at Cas only to see his eyes slide shut. 

“Hey! Hey, keep awake, Cas!” Dean said. “I am not getting stuck with Sleeping Beauty. You hear me?”

Cas mumbled something and opened his eyes. It was only just enough to be sure the angel was alive, but Dean had no choice but to take it. 

“Hang on in there,” Dean said. “Sam’ll find us. He’ll come get us and we’ll patch you up. Just don’t you die on me.”

Without looking to move a muscle, Cas looked so sad at that, so utterly sorry, that Dean felt his insides turn chill.

“No! You are not dying. Not today.” That got no reaction. “Fuck you, Cas! You die and me and I’ll ram that blade of yours so far-”

Cas moved, turning his head so it pressed into the crook of the arm he had sprawled out along the floor, and Dean cut off. Like that, with his eyes hidden, the only clue he had that Cas was still with him was the fact the guy’s other hand was still splayed across his own stomach. The minute that hand slipped…

When he couldn’t rouse Cas by shouting, Dean took to staring at that hand. 

Sam had to work out where they were. They’d tracked each other down on practically nothing before, and whatever had got the jump on them, it had to have left some clues. Sam would find them. And Dean would get out of these damn chains. And Cas would be fine.

Cas had to be fine.

With his own breaths harsh in his ear, it took Dean a while to register the sounds coming from Cas. Words. Muffled, indistinguishable, but words.

“What are you saying? Is it a spell? You gotta spell?”

Cas ignored him, spilling words into his own arm.

Dean waited, tension pulling at him, until he couldn’t take it any more.

“Cas! What are you saying?”

Finally, Cas turned his head, just enough that one eye peered up at Dean. His voice grated small and faint as he answered.

“A prayer. To anyone who’ll help you.”

There was something wavering about Cas’ words, like he wasn’t all there.

“Us. Who’ll help us,” Dean said, that chill turning to a sick shiver. “And your dick brothers ain’t gonna do squat to help us. Anyone good is gone.”

He didn’t need to see Cas flinch to know he’d gone too far, but fuck it. Those bastards had kept chewing Cas up and spitting him out, ragged and bleeding, and every time they clicked their fingers Cas ended up dragging himself back. And from what Dean could tell, the last time Cas asked for help he got strung up like Dean was now, and tortured. 

No. There was no help coming from the Host.

Cas sighed, and his hand slipped, hitting the concrete and letting the light curl out from his wound. It was a larger gash than Dean had realized. A human would have lost the fight by now, lying there on that floor with no help. 

“No. No, no, no.” Dean said, the denial leaving his lips without his permission. “Don’t you do this. Don’t do this to me.”

Panic loaned him the strength to jerk his body, trying to pull the chains from their tether above Dean’s head. If he could get down, if he could reach Cas, he could keep that Grace in himself. Until Sam found them. Cas could sleep, and Dean would keep him there.

A sob crowded his throat. 

“Cas, don’t…”

All movement was gone now, the angel still and silent on the floor. 

Sam hadn’t found them in time. Sam hadn’t found them, and Cas was… Cas was… 

Dean couldn’t finish the thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cas is NOT dead. I would tag MCD if he were.

His arms had passed through pain and turned numb. He barely felt them. The burn in his shoulders bit deep, but it was distant. Everything was distant. 

He couldn’t look away from Cas.

The seeping light had petered out, until only a few dim filaments leached from Cas’ body into the air. Cas was nearly dark.

Dean swallowed, the pressure in his chest almost enough to stop his words, and closed his eyes.

“Please,” he said. “Please, if anyone is listening, anyone at all, you’ve gotta come help Cas. He’s your brother, damn it. And he’s fucked up, but only because your whole species is fucked up. Come on. He’s saved you. More than once. Don’t let him die like this just because you’re pissed he chose us over you. He shouldn’t have had to chose, and you know it. And…and just…please. Please help him.”

He hung in the dark behind his eyelids, suddenly sure that when he opened his eyes he’d see no light at all. That, worse, he’d see wingprints.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he saw wingprints after an angelic death, but some part of him had long thought that would be the sign, the way he knew Cas was really gone from him for good, and he can’t seem to update his mental file on that one. 

“Don’t be dead,” he muttered, a more fervent prayer than any, and opened his eyes.

No wingprints. No light, either. 

That pressure in his chest made it up to his throat, clogging it. It pressed behind his eyes. 

“Cas?”

The name broke against the silence, and Dean couldn’t fool himself that there was even a hint of movement. But he’d know. Wouldn’t he? He’d know if Cas died. He’d-

The scrape of a bolt being drawn back dragged his attention to the door. It opened slowly, and in the pause before anyone walked in Dean had time to hope it was Sam.

Light hair and pale skin had the hope flaring out, and Dean fixed his face into stony impassivity before the guy’s eyes could fix on him. When they did, he saw a flash of nerves before whoever this was aimed for a sneer.

“Dean Winchester,” the man said, and there was dark smoke lingering in his words, in the real flesh under his skin. 

It was something Dean saw, sometimes and faintly, ever since Amara vanished back into the Void. Whatever veil she drew between Dean and his time with the Mark, his time as a demon, her disappearance ripped it away, and Dean saw them now, the demons, even when their eyes weren’t black. 

“Which pit did you crawl out of?” Dean asked. “Barely strong enough to make it, were you?”

The demon paused, just enough to tell Dean he’d scored a hit. Because that was another thing he’d learned, over the last few months: demon-kind needed a leader, and with Crowley and Lucifer both gone, some of them wanted Dean for the job. His opinion mattered, his view of their strengths, their value. To some of them.

Looked like this might be one of them.

“I have enough,” the demon said, his chin lifting. He flicked a look at Cas, and something like pride nudged onto his face. “I’ve done what Crowely and Lucifer and Heaven couldn’t do. I’ve ended that angel’s influence over you. You’re free to come back to us.”

Dean didn’t let himself look again. No way could he stare at Cas’…at Cas and keep up the steel he needed. 

“The only thing you’ve done is sign your own death-warrant,” Dean said. 

He let that drawl into his voice, the Kansas tang that came easier when he was a demon. Maybe just because he hadn’t cared about it’s associations then. Whatever the reason, it helped him get into the head-space.

“You want me back?” he asks. “You want me to take my place in Hell?”

The demon looked back at him. Nodded.

“Then I’ll be decorating it with your guts!”

Metal clanged as Dean tried to throw himself forward, not caring how it would jar through his whole body. In that moment, he meant it. He’d take the throne and coat the whole throne room with blood and flesh until all of Hell was empty. 

“And I’ll be remembered as the one who brought you back,” the demon said, as though being threatened by the man who could be the Knight of Hell was an honor. “I have the spell to complete the transition. I can do it without your word, but if you agree you’ll be stronger.”

Creeping horror sank through Dean, but Cas was dead, and he was stuck in spell-work and iron, and more strength meant he could make them all pay. Except…except it would mean leaving Sam, would mean throwing every sacrifice Sam and Cas and others had made to bring Dean back from the black smoke before. They deserved more than that. Charlie and Cas deserved more than that. 

“Bite me,” he said.

Nodding, the demon stepped back and turned to shout through the still open doorway.

“Get in here. We’re doing this.”

Still with his head turned from Dean, the demon dropped back to a normal volume.

“You can change your mind,” he said. “I hope you do. There’s time. We need to get the last ingredients together.” 

Sounds from outside apparently satisfied him that his orders were being followed, and he met Dean’s eyes.

“You can think it over while we strip the angel down for parts.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dean glared at them as they lugged in bags and boxes, some finely crafted wood and others cheap plastic. He yelled and cursed when one of the demons, who was riding a teenage girl with dark skin, pulled a knife from a bag. It was the sort of thing Dean’d used when he’d needed to carve up dead monsters for disposal. 

He screamed at them when a demon wearing a middle-aged, sun-burnt man knelt down behind Cas and buried a hand in the angel’s hair. 

“Get off him! Get off him or I’ll-”

A ringing slap stopped his words, leaving a trail of pain up his cheek. The first demon stepped round from the side, his expression tight.

“This is for your own good,” he said, and for all the world sounded like he meant it. “You’ll lead us, and you’ll know we did this for you.”

Dean worked his jaw, finding spots of deeper pain. It didn’t matter. If this dick of a demon got his way, Dean wouldn’t be human long enough to worry about some pain. 

“You think I’ll lead you when you’ve killed Cas?” he asked, part in threat and part in confusion. “When you’re making me watch while you, what, butcher him?”

Nausea tried to trickle into his throat. He swallowed, pushed it down.

This demon had pale green eyes, cold and burning with the kind of devout passion that made Dean want to fetch the bleach. Cas was nothing but a block to this thing, something keeping Dean from taking the place this creature wanted him to take.

“You do this,” Dean said, “you do this thing in front of me, and don’t you ever think I’ll forget.”

“You already said you’d gut me,” the demon said. “And I’m willing to pay the price. Hell will have a Knight and none of us will be troubled by that Seraph again. Least of all you.”

As though this image of Cas, on his back now with that man’s hand on one shoulder, the other holding Cas’ head still with his chin tipped back and his throat exposed, would ever leave Dean. 

Cas’ arms hung loose, his hands open and empty, and his eyes stared blankly up at nothing. 

At a nod from the pale demon, the girl lifted the blade, angling it to cut into the flesh below Cas’ jaw, and Dean felt everything in him seize. Cas was dead. Cas was dead, and Dean was going to watch these demons slice him to pieces. 

And from what they’d said, to him and each other, they’d be using Cas’ blood and Cas’ body to concoct a spell to turn Dean back into smoke trapped under his own skin. 

A crash from outside pulled every demon’s eyes to the door, and the pale guy barked out an order.

“Stop. What’s that?”

A fourth demon, who’d stayed over by the door, vanished outside, drawing a gun. Moments later, three gunshots rang out. A pause. A fourth shot. Silence.

Footsteps made their way to the door. 

“What was it?” the first demon called, making his way to the door.

He stopped, stepped backwards, his hands out.

Hannah followed him in. 

She was back in her first vessel, the dark-haired Caroline, and she held an angel blade in either hand. With her back straight and her movements sure, she backed the demon up to the pile of boxes.

“You’ll leave my brother alone,” she said.

And struck.

Dean had seen Cas fight, many times. He’d seen the guy smite and stab and punch. He’d seen him lay waste to whole rooms and face off against a single enemy. In Hannah, he saw that same brutal efficiency. She tore into the first demon with a ferocity that left an arm severed and the guy’s throat spraying blood. 

Spattered in crimson, Hannah turned to the two demons crouched by Cas, and span one of her blades. 

“Let him go,” she said. “And I might let you live.”

The demons shared a look, and attacked, Cas’ head left to thump to the ground. Ignoring it, Hannah shifted to the side, catching the girl on the point of one blade and thrusting up. The silver point flared through the girl’s back, right near her spine, and Hannah pulled back, turning swiftly to punch the burnt man in the face.

He stumbled back, his eyes wide, and glanced at the door. Dean saw him make the decision, almost called out to Hannah to stop him. The demon turned and ran.

He made it three feet before jerking to a stop, his arms flying out, his head snapping back, and dropping.

The echoes of the gunshot faded as another woman joined them, gun still held before her. 

“Well,” Bela said, scanning the room with an expression of interest. “Not that I haven’t always liked the thought of you in chains, Dean, but shall we get out of here?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, yes I am proud of the cheesy, terrible line in the middle. You're welcome.
> 
> Also, tell me what you think of this. Feedback really helps.

Bela frowned up at the chains, her body stretched in an attempt to reach them. Even balanced on one of the sturdier boxes, it was a push. 

Dean couldn’t feel her fingers on his forearms, but that didn’t meant anything. Even his shoulders were floating apart from him now. 

“This spell-work’s complex,” Bela said at last. “We might have to leave them on you for now. I think I can detach them from the wall.”

“Do it,” he said, even though Bela had clearly been talking to Hannah. “Just get us out of here.”

Bela raised her eyebrows at him, looking just as put together as she always had. If he hadn’t been able to see the smoke under her skin, he’d never had believed she’d been dragged away by Hell-hounds. 

“Us? I don’t think your angel made it.”

Hearing her say it shouldn’t hurt, not like it did. It wasn’t as though Dean was stupid. He still wanted to spit in her face.

“You both need more faith,” Hannah said.

She knelt by Cas’ head, one hand curved over his forehead, and a look of calm concentration on her face. 

“He’s not dead?” Dean asked, and didn’t even care how hoarse he sounded, how close to tears. No, not even with Bela right there, watching. 

Hannah met his gaze. Her eyes were full of sympathy.

“Not yet. Not quite.” Her tone turned brisk as she looked at Bela. “Help me get his free of this. It’s limited his Grace.”

She tapped the collar of iron round Cas’ neck, a thin band that didn’t look like it should be able to hold him and which didn’t cover enough of his throat to have provided any protection from that knife-wielding demon.

Bela cast Dean a look he couldn’t read and joined Hannah, crouching a few feet away from Cas as though she didn’t want to get too close. She peered down at the collar.

“That’s just as bad as Dean’s manacles,” she said. “How exactly do you expect me to get it off?”

“The same way you get me off,” Hannah said. “With your fingers.”

Bela tilted her head, her hair falling smoothly as she did so. Smooth was almost always a word Dean could apply to Bela.

“That is not the only way I get you off,” she said. “And I’m not sure how even my fingers can remove this iron. That’s a sigil I’m amazed these grunt-demons even managed to etch, let alone keep under control.”

Hannah followed Bela’s gesture, tracing her own finger along the lines. She nodded, looking concerned.

“True. We might have to wait until we’re somewhere safer and better equipped. Which mean we have to remove both of them with the spells still in place.”

“Is it safe to move him?” Bela asked, sounding doubtful. “He looks about at Death’s door. Wouldn’t take much to usher him through.”

“I’ve locked in the Grace he has left,” Hannah said. “We need to do more, but we need to go. Those four can’t be the only ones involved in this.”

Bela nodded and within minutes the two of them had the chains holding Dean and Cas to the room ripped loose, cutting the metal close. 

Dean landed with a bump, his legs aching and weak, and had to let Bela catch him. He had a blessed moment or two before the pain flared in his shoulders, and he bit back a curse as it spread to his arms. It would get worse, he knew. This wasn’t exactly his first manacle rodeo. 

“I suppose you expect me to say thanks,” he said through his teeth.

Bela scoffed.

“You? Thank me? Have you even spared me a thought, Dean, over all these years?”

“Save that for later,” Hannah said. “Come on.”

She heaved Cas up over her shoulders, apparently not caring that his blood soaked into her shirt. Dean and Bela followed her, far more slowly than Dean would have liked, and he spent the entire trip out of there watching Cas, watching for any sign of life. Whatever Hannah said, Cas didn’t look any more alive than he had a few minutes back. At least now his eyes were closed. Hannah must have done that. 

It was dim outside, with a few stars littering the sky, and Dean stumbled over a rock he didn’t spot in time. Bela stopped him from falling, but she complained about it. 

“Not now, Bela,” Hannah said, and Bela fell silent.

A car waited ahead of them, a huge thing with four wheel drive and pretensions of carrying a full soccer team. Bela propped Dean against the side and opened the back door, helping Hannah to load Cas into the back seat like he was some kind of parcel. It didn’t make Dean feel any better than Bela had to help him in, too. 

He sat with Cas’ head near his lap, itching to cup the side of Cas’ face and fine warmth there, but the mass of burning hurt in his arms wouldn’t let him control his hands. Not yet. 

Besides, he felt weak. Weaker than he should do.

“You sure he’s alive?” he asked, as Hannah slid into the passenger seat. 

She twisted to look at him, glancing at Cas with a look that seemed to intimate for Dean to be seeing it. 

“He’s still alive,” she said, and sounded as though she’d be willing to tell Dean that over and over if needs be. “If he’s to stay alive, we need supplies.”

“We’re stuck in hicksville, Kansas,” Bela said. “No idea where to get supplies round here, even if my old contacts do still exist.”

“Where in Kansas?” Dean demanded.

Turned out, if Cas had died in that room, it would have been within two hours of the Bunker. He wasn’t sure if that made it worse, dying so close to home. He wasn’t sure about taking a dead angel and a demon there, either, but it was Cas…

“I know a place,” he said.

*******************************

Sam met them at the car, yanking open the door near Cas and freezing with his lips parted. 

“He’s alive, Sammy,” Dean said, partly because he was still trying to convince himself. “Hannah swears he’s alive.”

That got Sam moving, even though he threw Dean a look that said he doubted what Hannah said on this. Dean’s arms had worked through the first pain and were now just stiff and aching. Still, he hadn’t got his energy, and from what little Hannah had told him on the drive that was likely the manacles. 

Either way, he took it slow climbing out of the car, and let Sam get Cas into the Bunker. Bela hauled bags out of the trunk and followed, Hannah bringing up the rear. 

Sam set Cas down on a table in the library, fetching a blanket and rolling it up to place under Cas’ head. It was so tender, so caring, that Dean had one of those moments where he felt he was watching from the outside. Cas and Sam had grown so close, and Dean sometimes thought he should back off and leave them to it. 

“Sit over here,” Hannah said to Dean, patting the back of a chair near the same table. “I’ll see what I can do about those cuffs.”

“Cas first,” Dean said. 

“This will help Castiel,” Hannah said. “You’re stronger just now. If I can work out how to remove the iron from you, I can apply it to the spell around his throat. Any missteps are far less likely to kill you than him.”

Less likely. Meaning there was a chance this could kill Dean. He sat and thrust out his arms.

“Get on with it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sam stitched Cas up while Hannah and Bela worked on the cuffs, talking in some shorthand that implied they’d known each other for a while and trusting each other’s ideas so easily that Dean felt like his head was spinning. 

“What you said back there,” he said, glancing up at Bela as she handed Hannah yet another mix of some oil with herbs and a drop of her own blood. “About, er, about…” He stopped and tilted his head to the side and back, as though that meant anything.

Bela smirked.

“You mean about me being brilliant in bed?” 

Dean saw Sam look up briefly, but only to frown. Probably more bothered Bela and Dean weren’t focused on the task than wanting in on the gossip. But Dean couldn’t do anything but sit here, and Hannah was the one coating the manacles in that oil and muttering in a language Dean didn’t know. 

“You and Hannah, huh?” he asked. “How’d that happen?”

“Aren’t you more concerned with how we’re here at all? With how Hannah’s alive and I made it off the rack?”

Dean didn’t shrug, but only because he didn’t dare jostle Hannah.

“Sure. That too. But I didn’t expect the two of you to hit it off.”

“And I’m sure you spent a lot of time mulling it over,” Bela said. “Tell me, Dean, did you ever wonder about what happened to me? I thought a fair bit about you, I have to say. Well, I would do. I heard about you. For years. Hell’s darling, let off the rack in only a few decades. Under the Master himself, no less. And then later, saved by an angel. We all heard about Dean Winchester’s angel. Those who saw it mostly died for the privilege. He didn’t stop to save any of the rest of us.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t exactly out of the goodness of his heart that he dragged me out,” Dean said, and it’s been years since he thought about that, about the fact he was just a mission to Cas back then. 

“Who cares?” Bela shot back. “You got out. And don’t start with the self-pity over everything else. You fought off everything that came your way, no matter who it cost. We heard the rumors, even down in the dark reaches I was stuck in. A Knight of Hell. Crowley’s favourite. What I wouldn’t have given for that sort of connection.”

“Yeah, well you always were a conniving-”

Hannah gripped Dean’s wrist, stopping him.

“I understand the two of you have a history,” she said, her voice too calm, “but you won’t insult Bela.”

Dean let out a breath, shifting things around in his head again. So, not just a physical thing.

“Okay,” he said. “No insulting demon-Bela.”

Bela rolled her eyes and sat on the edge of the table, her back only inches from Cas’ legs. She didn’t seem concerned about that.

“Please, Dean. As though you’re better than me. You’ve been a demon. A baby-Knight, even. And you killed Death himself, so anything I’ve ever done is automatically less awful than what you’ve managed. Though I suppose I should thank you for that last one.”

“I killed Death so you’re out?” Dean asked. “What, I killed people being dead?”

“Still a demon,” Bela said. “Really, it should hardly be so surprising to you that I’m out and about. But killing Death did disrupt the Veil even more, and with the Darkness out as well… Well, it hasn’t been a time of stability between the realms. And instability means opportunity, of course.”

“So you just waltzed right out of Hell?”

“I waltzed,” and she paused, something dark on her face, “out of Hell and into some hideous nether region full of lost ghosts. And monsters. Really, Dean, it’s a wonder reality is holding at all.”

“I’m not the only one who’s back,” Hannah said. “Bela helped a lot of us to find our way back. In some form or another. But you can hear about this later. For now…”

A flash of heat and a shower of sparks told Dean something had worked, and Hannah pulled the first manacle from his wrist. A slight smile settled on her face. 

“I think I can adapt this to work on Castiel,” she said. “It might take a while, but this is promising.”

Dean waited only long enough for the second cuff to be off before he was on his feet and by Cas’ side, giving in to the urge to reach out and press his palm against the side of Cas’ face. It was cold. 

“You said you locked his Grace in?” he asked. “So, he’s sleeping or something? Like, a medically induced coma?”

“Something like that,” Hannah said. “Dean, he’s weak. His injuries are severe, and not just to his vessel. That cut went right through to his real self. And the collar is something I never thought I’d see. He’s going to need all of his strength, even if I get the iron off him as quickly as I can. You… You might need to prepare yourself.”

Fear brought a taste to the back of the throat that Dean sorely wished he could forget.

“Why’d you think you’d never see it? What is it?”

Bela answered, voice clear and precise as always. Dean told himself he was imagining the sympathy in it.

“It’s an adaptation of the spells used to bind Lucifer, before he was cast into the Cage. It limits an angel, keeps it controllable. This version was meant to keep Castiel down until they could get what they needed from him. I have to hand it to them. They’ve got more ingenuity than I thought they did.”

Before Dean could lay into Bela for praising demons bent on making Dean into a cult leader, Sam spoke up. 

“How much time do you think we have to get that off him? And how close might it get?”

Hannah shook her head.

“It might only take minutes, or it might not work at all. Any help you give me would be useful.”

And Dean found himself sitting alone with Cas as the rest of the them clustered around the other table, debating and experimenting and failing over and over again to find a way to get Cas free.


	6. Chapter 6

An hour in to the attempts to work the counter-spell around for Cas, Dean found himself stroking his thumb along the sharp angle of Cas’ cheek. He paused for a fraction of a second, decided if anyone had a problem with it they could blow him, remembered which people that would mean, and changed his mind to just not giving a damn if he was seen. 

Another twenty minutes and another failed attempt later, he leaned closer to Cas’ ear and started talking.

“You hear me?” he asked. “Used to think you could always hear me, but then there was that whole being human thing, and I’ve not been sure about how well prayers work for you since. Don’t suppose it matters. Not like you always listen to me, anyway. And I don’t blame you, Cas. I’m not mad at you. Maybe I’ve been too hard on you for not doing things the way I want you to, but I’ve been trying to do better.”

He had, as well, after searching through his memories of Cas for any reasons the guy might have said ‘Yes’ to Lucifer. Getting Cas back had been a second chance, and Dean had been trying to take it. 

“Still a dick move, taking off on a hunt without me,” Dean said. He couldn’t quite keep the growl out of his voice. “I told you, a few hours more and I’d have been there. And then you wouldn’t have gone into that place alone, and I wouldn’t have walked in to find you slashed open.”

And now he was blaming Cas for his own injuries. Talk about dick moves.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know that sounds like I’m having a go at you, but I just want you to learn to be safe, all right? This can’t be the last time I talk to you. You get that? The last time you say my name will not be in some crappy concrete room with your Grace spilling out and distance between us.”

“Why?” Bela asked, from far closer than Dean had realised she was. “Do you want to hear him say your name from much closer? Maybe from under you?”

Dean closed his eyes and reminded himself that Hannah was keen on Bela, for some reason, and they needed Hannah to help Cas.

“What do you want, Bela?” he asked. “You come to tell me again how lucky I’ve been?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Bela said, pulling out a chair next to Dean and joining him. “You’ve never really known who I am. And I have no reason to want your angel to die. I have my own angel now, and I get how special they are.”

Dean pulled his hand away from Cas’ face and after a moment’s thought slid it down his hand until he reached the guy’s hand. He hesitated.

“Just hold his hand,” Bela said. “It’s not as though everyone in Hell doesn’t already know.”

“What?”

He paused with his fingertips on Cas’ wrist.

Bela huffed.

“Those rumors? A lot of them were about the two of you. And from what Hannah’s told me, Heaven has the same gossip. The Seraph and the Righteous Man. You should both be on a book cover with your shirts open and your hair flowing in the wind.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dean said.

“Really? Because I heard he defied Heaven on your say so. I heard he took on the souls of Purgatory so you could stay with your girlfriend and play at being suburban. I heard he gave up an army, that he almost let borrowed Grace burn him through, that he helped to remove the Mark, even when it meant having a spell almost tear him apart, all for you. Is any of that untrue?”

Of course it was. Bela wasn’t making any sense. 

Except… Cas had done those things. Not just for Dean. He’d turned his back on Heaven in the first place because he knew it was the right thing to do. Still, some of those things did sound closer to being for him, maybe, than he normally let himself think about.

When Bela didn’t say anything else, he shifted his hand until he had Cas’ held securely. 

“That’s what I thought,” Bela said. “Now, Hannah thinks she might have one more counter-spell ready. You hold on to him. We might have him back to you soon.”

She stood, clapping Dean on the shoulder before she went, and Dean had more trouble than usual summoning up insults about the woman.


	7. Chapter 7

Hannah’s focus was almost frightening as she held the taper to the collar, flames licking up as the holy oil caught fire. It burnished Cas’ skin. Dean had to keep himself from putting the fire out.

Sam stood right next to Dean, his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and Bela sat in the chair next to him, her hand on the table near Cas’, as though she intended to take hold of it if Dean let go. As if he was going to let go.

Sam had glanced at Dean’s hand in Cas’ and said nothing. 

The oil burned, sparking as it went, and Hannah intoned words that sounded like something old and living sat inside them. Dean couldn’t hold them in his head. He didn’t try. He just watched as, with each syllable, another line of script flared blue or gold or orange or green. 

Cas wore a collar of colors, now, and Dean tightened his fingers around the angel’s, not quite able to believe the fire wouldn’t burn Cas’ flesh. 

“Steady, Dean,” Bela said, almost under her breath. “Hold on.”

Hannah spoke the final word, and the colors blazed. Dean’s vision whited out for a moment, and when it cleared Hannah held the collar in her hands and Cas’ neck was free.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Dean said. 

“What now?” Sam asked at the same time. “What do we need to do?”

Bela’s chair scraped along the floor as she stood, and she was by Hannah’s side with a small bag before Dean could check what she was doing. She reaching into the bag and pulled out a vial of glowing blue light. Grace. That was Grace.

“Who’s is that?” Dean asked, because Cas had told him he wouldn’t take another angel’s Grace again, not even when Dean had tried to get out the words to say how much it would hurt him if Cas refused out of some morals and died for it. 

Hannah glanced at him, understanding on her face.

“His,” she said.

“That makes no sense,” Sam said. “Cas’ Grace…he got that back.”

“What was left of it,” Bela said. “Not all of his stuffing was there, was it now? He’s been a poorly padded teddy bear for a while now.”

Hope licked at Dean’s insides, and he wasn’t sure it was much better than the fear.

“You’re sure it’s his?” he asked. “Metatron said he used it up in the spell. Cas said.”

Bela and Hannah shared a look, and Bela passed the vial to Hannah, who held it carefully in her right hand.

“The spell didn’t use the Grace up so much as…I suppose the closest way of looking at it is that Metatron killed most of Castiel’s Grace. He sent it where angels go when they die.”

“Angel Heaven? Cas’ Grace has been in angel Heaven? But, isn’t his Grace part of him?”

Dean would never understand how Grace and angels and souls and minds and all that crap overlapped. Cas had been Cas without his Grace, but he’d also…not been. Dean hadn’t spent enough time with human Cas to be sure, and he would never stop feeling guilt over that, but in the brief time they’d had he’d picked up hints that Cas remembered some things differently, that some details had slipped. 

“How much of him him is in that? Have we been walking around with half a Cas?”

Hannah looked at him, and Dean got the feeling she was processing how to approach the matter. Cas had said, when he’d finally spoken about Hannah, about losing her, that she’d become one of the most thoughtful, most sensitive angels in the Host’s long history. Dean had never quite understood how that added up to being a part of fooling Cas with that final torture and rescue scene, but the guy hadn’t wanted to hear that opinion. Hannah clearly meant a lot to him. Now, Dean saw her attempting to find the right words and he saw what Cas meant. She didn’t look to have a bad bone in her. That whole shit-storm likely had been because she’d thought it was the best thing for everyone. 

That didn’t make it okay, but… Dean could relate.

“He’s been Castiel the whole time,” Hannah said. “But an angel’s Grace does contain some of that angel’s memories and personality. It has out imprint. So, yes, to an extent Castiel has not been entirely whole since Metatron took this from him.”

“And giving that back, that’ll fix him up?” Sam asked. “He’ll be fine?”

Hannah shrugged.

“Maybe. I’ve never seen an angel as damaged as Castiel who hasn’t called for a Rit Zien to end it. And his Grace has been in-” She paused and glanced right at Dean. “In angel Heaven for a long time. I’m not sure it’s unaltered by that.”

“And you’re, what, just going to shove that in him anyway?” Dean asked.

Without meaning to, he pulled Cas’ hand closer to him.

“If I don’t give him this, he’ll die, Dean,” Hannah said. “I’ve removed the collar, and what’s left of him is free to heal, but he’s so weak and so damaged I’m not sure he will. I’m almost certain he won’t make it without this additional Grace.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

Hannah’s lack of response told Dean she had no idea. 

Dean looked up at Sam, whose mouth was pulled into a tight line. He shrugged one shoulder.

“It’s not like it’s the craziest thing any of us has ever done, Dean,” Sam said. “If it’s this or watch Cas die, I say we risk it.”

“Castiel is Hannah’s brother,” Bela said. “What makes you think this is your choice?”

“Bela,” Hannah said. She turned to meet Bela’s gaze, and the softness there was something Dean would take a while to get used to. “If anything happens to me, I want any choices like this to be yours. I have to give Dean the same courtesy.”

Sam didn’t even ask why Hannah wanted Dean to choose, and not him. Maybe Bela was right about what everyone knew. 

“Do it,” Dean said, going with his gut. 

He made himself watch as Hannah removed the cap, as she held the vial near Cas’ mouth, and as light streamed from the container into the angel’s mouth. Cas’ lips were parted, just a bit, and the Grace streamed in. 

Cas lit up.

Dean clung to his hand, but it was hot, so hot he worried it might be burning. He couldn’t feel that. He couldn’t feel much of anything. He was just aware of light and pressure. After a moment, he wasn’t able to feel his own hand at all. Just the light. 

The light faded, and Dean still had hold of Cas. Cas who was looking right back at him, his eyes glowing. 

“Dean,” Cas said. 

And Dean didn’t care that everyone was watching. He pushed out of his chair and bent down to hug Cas. Somehow, in between standing and leaning over Cas, he switched targets, and pressed his lips to Cas’.


	8. Chapter 8

Pulling back, Dean met Cas’ eyes. The glow was gone, and now the usual deep blue of Cas’ none-Graced up eyes met Dean. He hadn’t realised how sacred he’d been he’d never see that again.

“Hey,” he said, and let himself stroke Cas’ hair back from his forehead. 

Behind him, he heard a sound as though someone was cutting themselves off from speaking. Probably Sam. Well, screw it. Watching Cas bleed out in front of him, and knowing the guy was praying to save Dean, had been too much. 

“You kissed me,” Cas said, because he was Cas.

Dean felt his lips curve into a smile.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I did kiss you.”

And he’d become a babbling dick, just like that. 

“Do you two want us to give you the room? Personally, I’d go for a bed, but if you’re set on having celebration sex on the library table, that’s your call,” Bela said. 

“Bela!” Sam said. He sounded at least as amused as he was angry, though.

“What?” Dean said. “No. No, we’re not going to have sex on the table.”

Which did slightly imply they’d be having sex somewhere else, but he pretended not to realize that. Cas probably wouldn’t be feeling up to going that far yet, anyway.

Holy crap, he was thinking about having sex with Cas.

Standing up and taking a step back from the table, Dean looked up at Hannah.

“It worked?” he asked. “Cas is gonna be okay now?”

“Hannah?” Cas asked. “How are you…? You’re alive.”

She had a soft smile on her face and, Dean noticed, Bela’s hand in hers. Looking down at Cas, and apparently not finding anything odd about speaking to him while he was still flat on his back, she addressed the other angel.

“I am. We can discuss it later. How does it feel, Castiel?”

“Almost whole,” he said, sounding thoughtful, and apparently fine with leaving finding out how Hannah was back for later. Then again, if anyone could roll with not knowing how a resurrection happened, it’d be Cas. “There’s something…strange about it, but I feel much better.”

As thought he’d been suffering from a cold or a hang-over, and hadn’t almost been dead. Then again, given what Dean had learned about Heaven and it’s methods over the years, maybe this didn’t seem so much worse than a dressing down. 

“We’ll need to keep an eye on it,” Hannah said.

“If you’re good for now, let’s get you up,” Dean said, before Bela, who had more of a smirk than a smile going on, could make another comment, maybe about Dean joining Cas on the table. There was every chance with Bela that she’d really try to freak Dean out by suggesting they all watch and award marks. “See if you have your sea legs.”

“We’re not at sea,” Cas said.

Dean was nearly certain that was a Cas version of a joke. Almost certain. 

He took hold of Cas’ hand again and hauled the guy up, part of him worried that Cas still didn’t have the strength to manage it himself. Cas let him do it, a fond look in his eyes. Had that been there all the time? Or was Dean just noticing it now he’d kissed Cas?

Once on his feet, Cas swayed slightly as Dean patted at his shoulders.

“You good? Not needing to fall over?”

“I’m fine, Dean,” Cas said. “And you? How are you?”

He peered at Dean as though he could tell how Dean was just by looking. The times Cas had insisted on poking and prodding at Dean suggested he couldn’t, but maybe that had just been Cas overreacting to Dean being unwell. Dean wasn’t keen on letting go of Cas’ shoulders right now, even though Cas seemed steady enough on his feet. 

“Me? Don’t worry about me. I’m not the one who nearly died.”

Cas looked surprised. Dean wanted to believe Cas had somehow not really known how close he was to death, but Cas had told Dean it was too late. He couldn’t have meant anything else. Which meant Cas’ surprise was for Dean being worried about him. 

There were times Dean wished he was as dumb as he sometimes pretended to be.

“Seriously, Cas, I’m fine. If it makes you better, heal me all up.”

He didn’t need Bela’s snicker to know how dodgy that sounded. Cas’ look of gratitude was enough that he just didn’t care. 

“Hey, Dean,” Sam said. “Why don’t you take Cas off to get some clean clothes. We’ll straighten up in here.”

The mention of clothes had Dean glancing down at Cas’ shirt. Or where his shirt should be. The demons had left it ragged with cuts, the main one across Cas’ stomach tearing across the fabric, and Sam had pulled the buttons off in his haste to get to stitching Cas’ wound. Dean had no idea where the angel’s jacket, coat and tie had got to. They hadn’t been on Cas when Dean had been dragged in and chained.

Now that he looked, Cas’ Grace must have healed up that wound, because Cas’ stomach was whole and flat and toned. 

“Er, yeah. Good idea.”


	9. Chapter 9

Dean left Cas standing at the side of the bed and pulled T-shirts and jeans and flannels out of his dresser. There had to be something that would fit Cas. 

“Dean, anything is fine,” Cas said, after a few minutes.

Turning with a shirt clutched in his hands, Dean saw Cas leaning slightly, as though trying to see what Dean was doing more clearly. Cas straightened, his gaze lifting to Dean’s face. He looked bemused.

“You nearly died,” Dean said, because it seemed important to get that clear.

“Yes. But I didn’t die.”

“But you nearly did.”

“But I didn’t.” Cas frowned. “As far as these things go, we’ve both had worse. Why is this time so hard for you?”

Dean opened his mouth, but he couldn’t quite get the words to form in his mind, let alone troop out of his mouth in any sensible way. He just stared back at Cas, who lifted his chin as his eyes widened.

“Is it because we just kissed? Has that made it worse?”

That sparked a neuron, freeing up some words.

“We didn’t kiss,” Dean said, and pushed on as Cas’ frown grew. “I kissed you. You didn’t kiss me back.”

“And that’s the problem?” Cas asked. 

Before Dean could answer, Cas stepped closer, really close, and curved a hand around the side of Dean’s face. His fingers made it round to the back of Dean’s neck, and his thumb settled near Dean’s ear. Cas had huge hands, now Dean came to think about it. 

His lips were even softer than they’d seemed out in the library, too.

Cas pulled back, looking just on the edge of nervous.

“Is that better? Or has it made it harder?”

Dean really wanted to believe Cas knew how that sounded. Hell, maybe he did. The guy couldn’t be that naive, not with everything he’d seen and with what Metatron had dumped in his head. Either way, Dean gave in to the impulse to follow that thread.

“It’s a start,” he said. “But we can aim for harder.”

And he grinned. 

“I don’t know what-”

“Let me show you,” Dean said. 

He moved Cas back until there was space between them, and slid his hands up under the material over Cas’ shoulders. The shirt was thin, cool, and it slipped down Cas’ arms easily. 

“That okay?” Dean asked, in case Cas really didn’t get what the cheesy innuendo had been about. 

Cas nodded, his lips parted. 

“Good. It okay if I keep going?” Dean asked, and trailed one hand down to Cas’ belt. 

Another nod. 

Dean bit his own lip as he unbuckled the belt, feeling Cas’ hips shift with the movement as he pulled the belt free of each loop. For someone who could be as immovable as the mountains themselves, Cas was letting himself be moved by this. It made Dean wonder how responsive he’d be in other ways. 

The zipper sounded loud in the otherwise quiet room, and Dean paused. Tactical error, leaving Cas’ shoes and socks. The demons had left those on him.

“Er. Been a while since I’ve done this,” he said, voice low. “Give me a minute.”

He heard Cas take a sharp breath as Dean sank to his knees. Interesting. The guy clearly had some understanding, and some expectations. Dean would have to remember that. 

“Mind out of the gutter, Cas,” he said.

But he let himself look up in a movement he’d had a lot of success with in his younger days, knowing what the sight of Dean on his knees, staring up through his lashes, could do to a man. For good measure, he licked his lips. Cas’ interest was far too close to Dean’s face to be missed.

Dean wrapped an hand around Cas’ left ankle.

“I’m just gonna deal with these,” he said.

At Cas’ nod, Dean pulled the laces undone and urged Cas to lift his foot. Maybe he should have had Cas sit down first, but when Cas rested a hand lightly on Dean’s head, maybe for balance, Dean found it hard to regret doing it this way. Especially when Cas stroked across Dean’s hair, causing a ripple of tinging sensation over Dean’s scalp. 

Okay. Maybe he’d learn a few new things about himself here, as well. Always good to grow as a person.

“Let’s just work on getting you out of these clothes, okay, Tiger?” Dean said, and Cas didn’t look at all put out by the tacky pet-name. 

Dean had made a lifetime’s study of weaponed pet-names, and Cas just acted like it was a perfectly fine thing to call someone you were part way through undressing, like he didn’t get it was usually dismissive and trite. Maybe a good thing, given Dean hadn’t meant to be defensive. Old habits.

Once Cas’ feet were bare, Dean rose to his feet, undoing the zipper the rest of the way and settling his hands on Cas’ hips, under the fabric. 

“I can stop,” Dean said, because Cas had been silent for a few minutes.

“No.” Cas sounded certain, at any rate. “I want… Keep going.”

Dean did as he was told.

Naked, Cas looked every bit as good as Dean had expected he would. Better. More vulnerable, but more touchable, too. And mostly hard.

Dean stroked one hand along the angle of Cas’ hip, the other cupping Cas’ face with a thumb under the guy’s jaw, adjusting Cas’ head until he had it tipped back and was looking right into Dean’s eyes. Dean had never thought before that he’d find it so compelling to be standing fully clothed when his partner wore nothing, but it could just be that everything with Cas felt so loaded, so full of potential and sparks, that anything would be exciting.

“I can find you something to wear,” he said.

“Yes,” Cas said, and Dean felt a rush of disappointment. “I imagine I should get dressed at some point. Sam might not like it if I walked around naked all the time. But right now I want you naked, too.”

The smart-mouthed fucker. 

Cas didn’t help Dean undress. Instead, he let Dean push him until he sat on the bed, leaning back slightly with his hands behind him, and watched Dean strip. It wasn’t like Dean put on a show, but the way Cas’ gaze drifted up and down his body was enough for him to take it slower than he might have otherwise. 

“See anything you like?” Dean asked, because he couldn’t stop trying to derail this with crappy humor, it seemed, even though he didn’t want to.

“Yes,” Cas said, as though that was a perfectly normal question to ask. “Would you like a list?”

Instead of answering, Dean moved closer, and it was his turn to look down at Cas. Right. Cas looked to be a natural at looking up at a guy, and Dean would be asking about exploring that later, but just now he wanted closeness, not a blow-job. 

“Get on the bed properly,” he said, and watched Cas obey at once, pushing himself back until he had his head on the pillow and was laid out on top of the covers. 

Dean followed him, leaning on his elbow and running a hand up Cas’ chest, his throat, and back to his cheek. 

“You, er, you get we don’t have to do this?” Dean asked. 

Some part of him was sure Cas was just going with Dean’s lead, or that he felt he owed Dean somehow. 

“Shut up and kiss me again,” Cas said.

Dean obeyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly don't know whether to go with more of a full on sex scene next or skip it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going with fade to black. Have what happens after.

Pulling the belt on his robe tighter, Dean wandered down the hallway to the kitchen. It was quiet. It usually was in the Bunker, but he’d half thought he’d hear someone talking. Not Cas. Cas was asleep in Dean’s bed, still naked. 

He wasn’t sure yet if he should be worried Cas was asleep, but there’d been nothing wrong with his energy levels earlier, and he wasn’t burning up or anything. He’d ask when Cas woke up. 

Or, he could always ask Hannah. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee in front of her, looking more relaxed than he’d thought she’d be.

“Er, hey,” he said, moving past her and pouring a mug for himself. “You good?”

“Yes,” she said. “Very good. And you?”

“Fine,” Dean said. 

He turned to lean against the kitchen counter, sipping his drink and watching the way Hannah sat so precisely. She hadn’t learned to slouch the way Cas had.

“Cas is fine, too,” Dean said. “I think. He’s sleeping.”

Hannah nodded, not looking overly concerned about that. Some bit of tension he’d been denying he felt went out of Dean.

“So, it’s okay he’s asleep?” he asked, just to be sure.

“Castiel said to me once that sleep could be pleasant, if you knew you weren’t just going to wake up as exhausted as you were when you climbed into your sleeping bag. Angels don’t have to sleep, and we may need to keep an eye on it, but if he’s sleeping just because he wants to then it should be fine.” She tipped her head to the side, fixing Dean with an all too understanding look. “I take it you were in the bed with him?”

Dean felt the flush in his cheeks and all the way down his body. Hannah wasn’t him mom, or his sister, or anything like that, not that Dean really knew what that would be like, but he felt as flustered as if she were.

“Er, well. I, er, we…”

“I heard,” Hannah said. 

“What?”

“I heard. Before Castiel blocked the sound.”

Hannah had to be far less innocent than she appeared, to be smiling at that. It was a small smile, little more than a soft curl to the edges of her lips, but the way she picked up her mug and hid her mouth made it all the more suspect. 

“Are you teasing me?” Dean asked. 

“Yes,” Hannah said. “But I’m also telling the truth. If I’m to be around for any length of time, Castiel and I will have to remember to block out certain sounds.”

“Oh, right,” Dean said, and tried to push the thought of Hannah hearing him and Cas having sex out of his mind. “You and Bela. The two of you get pretty loud, huh?”

“There’s maybe less moaning involved than there is with some people.”

And that was… That…

“I was not moaning,” Dean said.

Which was the moment Bela stepped into the kitchen.

“You were moaning, Dean?” Bela asked. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

She stopped behind Hannah and leaned down to press a kiss to the angel’s head. Somehow, it seemed more intimate than Hannah overhearing him with Cas, and Dean glanced away.

“No need to be shy,” Bela said. “And we’re only teasing. Really. It’s hardly the most embarrassing sex story. Is there any coffee for me?”

Which is how Sam found them sitting drinking coffee and sharing stories about their sexual adventures. Bela and Dean, that was. Hannah mostly listened and laughed softly every now and again. It didn’t seem to trouble her when Bela talked about sliding down a trellis to escape an angry husband she hadn’t known about, or described how one heist turned into a three-way with her partner and a guard.

“Really?” Sam asked. “There’s a cult of demons out to make Dean their king, and you’re sharing sexcapades? You taking notes, Dean?”

“Oh, Dean doesn’t need any ideas for wild sex with strangers,” Bela said. “Not now he’s sealed the deal with Castiel.”

To his credit, Sam only choked a little on his coffee, and Dean had to wonder what Sam thought would happen when he saw Dean kiss Cas and then sent them off to Dean’s room to remove the rest of the angel’s clothing. Had he thought they’d just hold hands really intensely? 

“Love’s a beautiful thing, Sammy,” Dean said, throwing his hands out and grinning in a way he knew would get under Sam’s skin. “No need to be weird about it.”

“Love?” Hannah asked.

He could brush that off, but he was pushing forty, near enough, and everyone round the table looked ready to hear Dean confirm it. Even Bela. Sam’s face was nothing but open support. 

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Let’s not get all choked up about it, though.”

“Okay,” Sam said, nodding. “I suppose that’s worth leaving the demon-cult problem for a night. How about I go and buy some steaks? Get a proper meal together.”

“What, like some kind of engagement party?” Dean asked. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself, Sam.”

Sam blinked.

“I…never mentioned an engagement. You think this is heading that way?”

“It…shut up and go buy my steak.”

Sam took Hannah with him, insisting he needed some help with choosing foods Cas might like, and Bela was still laughing at Dean when they went. He let her. He even grinned back.


	11. Chapter 11

Half an hour later, Cas was still out cold. Dean checked. 

From the doorway of his room, a bar of light fell from the hallway over Cas, his shoulders and one arm visible. He was hugging the pillow.

“Cute,” Bela said from just behind Dean. “I can see why you like him.”

Dean yanked the door shut, glaring at the demon, who switched to looking far too innocent.

“What? I thought we were bonding.”

“Not by creeping on Cas, we’re not,” Dean said, taking her arm and steering her back down the hallway. 

In the library, he let go of her and dropped into one of the chairs, rubbing a hand over his face. His afternoon nap with Cas hadn’t been enough to make up for being kidnapped, strung up, emotionally wrung out and then thoroughly disabused of the notion that Cas was lacking a clue in the bedroom. Dean shifted a bit just thinking about it. 

“Where’s your living room?” Bela asked, taking the seat across from him. “You don’t really sit in here or the kitchen the whole time, do you?”

Dean had to mentally change gears. Home design wasn’t normally his subject of choice.

“Why not? They’ve got chairs.”

Bela pulled a face at him.

“It’s really much for relaxing, though.”

“If we want to relax we have our rooms,” Dean said. “We even watch TV in Sam’s room.”

“What, like you’re at University? In dorm rooms?” Bela asked.

“There some law against it?” Dean shot back, stung. 

The Bunker was the closest thing he’d had to a stable home base since Bobby’s went up in smoke, and even before then it wasn’t really Dean’s. This underground lair was larger, warmer and more comfortable than any motel room, and hearing Bela criticize it wasn’t okay.

“I’m just saying,” Bela said, “you could get a couch, a TV you can all sit down to watch. Hell, maybe a throw rug or two. And why only the three of you in such a large space?”

“Two,” Dean corrected, looking away. 

There was silence, maybe while Bela thought about what a loser Dean was that he hadn’t even managed to get Cas to move in, despite not being welcome in Heaven.

“I’m pretty sure Castiel will stay if you just ask him outright,” she said. “From what Hannah’s told me, he spent a lot of time telling her how much he wanted a home, and you were always mentioned somewhere in the conversation. Have you ever tried actually asking him?”

Of course not. He hadn’t asked Sam, either. Sam had just moved in when Dean did.

Maybe that hadn’t been the best way to go about it.

“I made him a room up,” Dean said. 

“And told him it was his? Specifically?” 

“Exactly what makes you such an expert?” Dean asked.

“Oh, I’m not. Believe me. But I spent enough of my life avoiding connections to know how hard it can be when you decide to be connected. I keep thinking Hannah’s going to leave, just walk away without looking back, and every time I think that I find myself pushing her. You and me? We’re not so different.”

Dean opened his mouth to deny it, but with Bela sitting in front of him, with Bela having helped him, and Cas, and not seeming to be about to fleece them for it, it was harder to keep up his old opinions of her. She did have a point. 

“I didn’t have a demon kill my parents,” Dean said, unable to stop himself.

He looked at her in time to see the look on her face, an expression of blank hurt before she smoothed it over. A muscle in her jaw clenched.

“You think I did that for fun?”

“For money.”

Bela laughed, a harsh bark of a thing. It made Dean realise how genuine her laughter had been so far. 

“Money. Money’s just what I used to keep myself safe once they were gone. It certainly didn’t keep me safe when they were alive. When my father was alive.”

And she looked away, her eyes hard and distant and…

“Oh,” Dean said. “Oh, fuck. I… I didn’t know. You didn’t-”

“Tell you my whole tragic back-story when we met over a cursed rabbit’s foot? No. Silly me. It slipped my mind.”

Fair enough. Not like Dean told everyone he met about his crap. 

“You could have mentioned something,” he said, and he didn’t even mean to sound like a dick. “Sam and me, we could have tried to help you.”

“Out of the deal? You couldn’t even help yourself. How could you have helped me?”

“We could have tried.”

Bela sighed.

“Dean, what happened to me when I was a child was appalling. I know that. I know where the blame lies. And trust me, I didn’t deserve to suffer in Hell for wanting out of it. But I wouldn’t have deserved Hell even if that had never happened to me. Most people in Hell don’t deserve Hell.”

She had a point. 

“And people shouldn’t need a terrible thing being done to them before you decide they’re worth caring about,” she said. “You don’t have to suddenly pretend you like me now you know, either. I’m a lot more than what my father did to me.” 

She paused, narrowing her eyes, before going on in a gentler tone.

“You’re a lot more than what’s been done to you, as well. What your father did, what Alastair did. What you’ve done to yourself.”

Affirmation from demon-Bela. This was not how Dean had expected his week to go.

“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.”

She looked frustrated, but let it go. Instead, she leaned forwards and tapped the table with a finger.

“So, now we’ve got that sorted, where shall we put the couch you’re going to buy?”


	12. Chapter 12

Sam found Dean standing out in the field behind the Bunker, glass of whiskey in hand, his head tipped back to stare at the stars. There were a lot of them.

“Hey,” Sam said. “You doing okay?”

Dean turned and for a moment the peace on his face was enough that Sam wished he’d left Dean to it. He’d caught Dean like this sometimes before, caught him when he wasn’t performing, but it was more usual to see pain or worry. Maybe Dean should have been more worked up now, what with those demons out to force him into a crown. It didn’t take a genius to understand the cause.

“Cas not out here with you?” Sam asked.

Dean smiled, warm and real. 

“No. No, he’s talking with Hannah. Thought I’d give them some space.”

Dean’s body language was open, relaxed, and Sam joined him, standing shoulder to shoulder and gazing at the sky. He let the silence coat them for a while. They didn’t often get this, not when they were both in a mood to appreciate it. 

“So,” Sam said at last, because he wasn’t going to make a huge deal of this, he wasn’t, but his best friend and his brother had taken a leap neither one of them had seemed able to take for years, and Sam at least needed to acknowledge it. With more than a steak and salad. “You and Cas, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, ducking his head and smiling at his drink. “Yeah, me and Cas. Who’d of thought it?”

Sam didn’t point out that almost everyone with any extended contact with them thought Dean and Cas had been sharing a bed, or a back-seat, for years. Even people they ran into once, on a case or the few times they’d been out and about just because, had looked at his brother and the angel as though the two of them were a couple. Sam had been asked about it more than once. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Can’t imagine.”

He glanced at Dean, seeing no sign of the kind of hesitation or bluster his brother threw up whenever something emotional happened and he wasn’t prepared for it. 

“I’m pleased for you,” Sam said. “Just so you know.”

Dean smiled, one corner of his mouth crooking up.

“I’m pleased for me, too,” he said. “Just so you know.”

Sam thought about mentioning the problems they had, the demons, and Bela turning up, and Hannah returning from the dead. Not to mention that comment about Bela leading others back from wherever Hannah had been. But the sky was full of stars, and all three of them were safe and healthy, and Dean looked happier than he had in years. 

He nudged Dean’s shoulder, smiled back, and enjoyed the moment.


	13. Chapter 13

Cas woke him by trailing kisses across his shoulders, murmuring good morning with his lips pressed to Dean’s skin. 

By the time they made it out of Dean’s room it was mid-morning, and Sam greeted them with a raised eyebrow. Right. Being pleased for them didn’t mean a free pass on the judgment when they spent a bit of extra time in bed, then. 

Ignoring Sam, Dean made a bee-line for Hannah. 

“You busy?” he asked.

Hannah looked up from the book she was reading, her gaze shifting a little away from Dean, to the side and behind. To Cas. 

“No,” she said. “What do you need?”

“I need to know how you came back,” Dean said. “And how you found us in that room. I need anything that can help me get rid of these demons who are threatening Cas.”

“They’re not-” Cas started.

“Don’t argue with me,” Dean said. “They said they needed bits of you for the spell. They almost sliced and diced you right in front of me. How is that not a threat?”

From Cas’ silence, that hit home. From the look of satisfaction on Hannah’s face, Dean wasn’t the only one who thought Cas should pay more attention to his own safety. 

“I’ll tell you everything I can,” Hannah said. “I don’t know how much it’ll help, but anything I can do, I’ll do. I still feel awful about the last time I saw you, Castiel. If I can make it up to you-”

“You feel awful?” Cas asked. “I let you die.”

Dean held up a hand before they could get into it about who had more guilt. 

“It was a shitty situation all round,” he said. “And I’m sure you both wish it had gone differently, but let’s focus on what we need now. All right?”

By the time he had Cas and Hannah settled at the table, Bela had joined them. She sat next to Hannah, taking the angel’s hand and lacing their fingers together. 

“You want to know how I found you?” Hannah asked. “I heard Castiel’s prayer. I followed that to the building. And then I followed your prayer to the room.”

“It’s quite convenient that you both like to pray to anyone who’ll listen,” Bela said. “I can barely imagine such faith.”

Neither Dean nor Cas said anything at that. 

“As for the rest,” Hannah said, “we never really knew what happened to us when we died. Angels. We’ve been taught for as long as we remember that, when we die, we simply cease to be. But Castiel kept returning, suggesting he must be returning from somewhere.”

“Turns out,” Bela said, “that Hell and Purgatory are just two of the realms setting themselves up as afterlives.”

“There’s more?” Dean asked.

“Of course,” Cas said, as though it should have been obvious to everyone. “Hades and Valhalla and thousands of other afterlives exist. You didn’t think Hell and Heaven were the only places souls reside?”

Dean kind of had, but he pulled a face that he hoped made it look like his world-view wasn’t shaken. Hannah frowned at Castiel.

“But they’re adjuncts of Hell or Heaven. Pocket realms. Or, sometimes, connected to the fairy-realm. We can travel to them, if we wish. We couldn’t leave the place where Bela found me. And I tried. I knew the situation in Heaven, and I tried to leave, to get back and help. I couldn’t.”

Cas made a sound that could have been anything.

“Other afterlives aren’t adjuncts,” he said. “That’s just what those in charge wanted us to think. But it doesn’t match what I’ve seen.”

Dean hadn’t had chance to really think about it before, but Hannah looked at Cas as though he could see things she couldn’t. He wondered why. Cas had only just got all of his Grace back, but he was pretty sure that, all things being equal, Cas was a lot stronger than Hannah. Did that mean he could see things Hannah couldn’t?

“You think we’ve been lied to?” Hannah asked.

“I know we’ve been lied to,” Cas said. “The question is how much, and exactly what the truth is. In any case, some realms are harder to enter than others. Purgatory was locked up tight enough that it took a battalion to break me out. I was at full strength then, more or less, and I couldn’t have gotten out on my own. And it’s never made sense to me that we’d just…blink out of existence when we die. Not when almost nothing else does. The multi-verse is a closed system.”

That confidence in his voice was almost terrifying, bringing home to Dean how much Cas saw that he didn’t. He reminded himself that Cas had some areas where he was willing to learn from Dean. Besides, it was impressive, as well as slightly scary, and Dean just had to deal.

“So there really is an angel Heaven?” he asked. “And, what, Bela found it?”

Bela shrugged. 

“I told you. The realms are fractured. I walked right out of Hell after centuries spent trying to break free. I didn’t mean to end up where I did, and I still don’t really know how it happened. But it did, and where the beings I found there couldn’t see a path back to Earth, I could.”

“And they followed you?” Dean asked. “You followed her?”

Hannah nodded.

“Yes. Bela…” She stopped and smiled fondly at the other woman. “Bela found me when I had all but given up, and she had such drive, such passion, that I found enough hope to follow her. I can see, now, Castiel, why you found it so compelling to follow Dean.”

Cas gave her a tight smile, as though not entirely comfortable with the comment, but he also sneaked his hand onto Dean’s knee. 

“Bela, being human once, won’t have been meant to be in that realm,” Cas said. “Just as Dean found a way out of Purgatory, Bela will have been given a path to follow from a place where only dead angels should be.”

Bela nodded as though every part of that made sense.

“It took a long time to find our gateway home,” Hannah said. “We had a lot of time to talk. To get to know one another.”

“To realise two beings this hot should be seeing what they could get up to together,” Bela added. 

“And on this walk, you somehow learned about the symbols on the cuffs? On Cas’ collar?”

Hannah shook her head.

“Of course not. Bela was in the darkest pit of Hell. She shouldn’t have been, but it did give her a place from which to find a great many secrets out.”

“I heard Ruby talking to Lilith,” Bela said. “I heard a demon whose name no-one would speak refer to herself as Meg. I learned to keep out of their way, especially if there was any danger they might meet. There were others, who you won’t know, and I’ve always been good at acquiring things. In this case, I acquired knowledge.”

“And does any of this knowledge tell you how to knock this Demon-King nonsense on the head?” Dean asked.

Bela pursed her lips and looked Dean up and down. 

“It might,” she said. “How do you feel about a trip”


	14. Chapter 14

The lock-up in Utah was exactly how Bela had left it. No surprise, really. She’d paid enough for the security of stagnation with the thing. 

Still, it sent a thrill of strangeness through her, to see her own boot-print in the dust from the last time she was here. In her mind, it was hundreds of years since. Here, in the human world, it was less than a decade. Either way, she looked damn good for her age.

Smiling at her reflection in a polished bronze bowl, she tried to see if there were any outward signs of what she’d been through. Maybe there was something in the way she held herself, or in the tightness of her skin, but this body she’d acquired, one just like her old, human one, might be the way she’d look if she’d actually lived those nearly ten years on the surface, doing nothing more horrendous than making the occasional trade of a sought after item. 

Going through Hell and through angelic Heaven should leave more marks. 

A clatter brought her attention to the people behind her. Dean looked up from balancing an earthenware jar, the guilty expression on his face over something so minor almost enough to make Bela laugh. This was Alastair’s apprentice, this was the man who’d risen from the rack more brutalized and more brutal than any demon since Alastair himself, and he looked like he expected to be scolded for knocking a pot.

“It’s fine, Dean,” she said. “It’s almost five thousand years old, but I’m sure we can just glue it back together if you drop it.”

Dean pulled his hands away from the jar, holding them up as though afraid even being close would cause destruction, and turned, wiping his fingers on his legs. Was he trying to wipe off the clumsiness? Dean was even stranger than she’d remembered. 

“What are we looking for, anyway?” he asked. 

Behind him, Castiel picked up a withered finger on a chain, and raised an eyebrow at Bela.

“Not that,” she said, before the angel could point out it was a fake. Sometimes, fakes were worth a lot. She’d been a businesswoman, after all. Whatever sold. “This way.”

She’d thought this was a fake, too, back when she’d acquired it. It was only still here because she’d not worked out how to spin it into a sale. Amongst the many tidbits she’d picked up in the Pit was the knowledge that this was no fake.

She’d expected to find Dean beside her when she lifted the lid on the crate, but Castiel appeared instead, placing one surprisingly graceful hand on the edge of the box and leaning in. He was focused, intent. She could well believe he’d commanded battalions, that he’d more than once commanded large portions of the Host. She had a little more trouble believing he’d commanded Hannah.

“Where did you find this?” he asked. 

As usual, Bela was struck by the depth of his voice, by the harmonics she was almost sure Dean and Sam didn’t notice. Side-effect of being a fully-spawned demon. There was a tang to being so near to an angel, something like having a live-wire running just under the skin. She’d know. The Pit was full of creativity. 

“In a junk-shop in Leeds, of all places,” she said. “Thought it might fool some particularly stupid buyer.”

Castiel slid his gaze her way, looking at her from the corner of his eye. Bela upgraded her old, occasional thoughts about getting Dean into bed. Having this angel there too could be more than worth it. And Hannah wasn’t the jealous sort. 

Still, not the time. 

“This isn’t junk,” Castiel said. 

“No kidding,” Bela said. “Thank God you’re here to correct me. I dragged us all the way here because I still thought it was junk.”

The heat in his eyes was enough that she almost backs down. Of course, she almost pushed him further. But that whole not the time thing…

“Look, it turns out this is capable of creating a demon without all the fuss of spending several subjective centuries in the Pit. From what I can tell, Cain used it to speed up the process with his Knights. He didn’t pass the Mark to them, you understand. That would have given them his power. Which means that our boy Dean wasn’t turning into any Knight of Hell. He was becoming Cain’s Heir. You can see why the demon groupies want him so badly.”

Castiel frowned, his eyes narrowing. It was startling. Bela actually wanted to take a step back. She didn’t.

“We want to stop them from turning Dean, not find a more efficient way to do it,” he said. 

His words were conviction. Bela only wished she could master the skill.

“I have a plan,” she said. “This is part of it. Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

Castiel opened his mouth, stopped, and glanced behind Bela. At Hannah. The sparks which blossomed under Bela’s skin from Hannah’s presence were gentler than the ones planted by Castiel, but she could tell when Hannah was close. 

Meeting her eyes again, Castiel grimaced. He was more expressive than Hannah was. 

“I trust Hannah,” Castiel said. “Collect what you need and we’ll listen. But we aren’t doing anything without being sure.”

If Dean had an opinion on that, he didn’t share it.


	15. Chapter 15

Dean claimed the bedroom at the back of the house, throwing his bag down and rifling through it for a change of clothes. Bela had refused to stay in a motel, insisting it would be bad for her skin. Hannah had nodded as though that made sense, and Sam had laughed. Cas had been busy throwing worried looks at the bags Bela had brought from the lock-up. 

The angel was more troubled by this whole thing than Dean was, but the demons were wanting to use Cas as a pantry for ingredients, so that made sense.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

Cas looked round from where he’d been staring out of the window, his arms crossed. 

“Fine,” he said. “I just hope this plan of Bela’s isn’t completely disastrous.”

“Look, I have plenty of reason not to trust Bela, but what’s she ever done to you? She helped Hannah save us from that cult, she’s in love with your sister, and you were just fine working with a demon before. Thought you had a soft spot for Meg.”

Cas shrugged.

“That’s…complicated,” he said. “I never forgot what Meg was.”

“You said she was a thorny beauty, Man,” Dean said, and he hadn’t realised that memory was seared into his brain. 

“She was,” Cas said, as though he couldn’t quite see how that related to the conversation. 

Dean stared for a moment longer. 

“Right. Okay, then. Thorny beauty it is.” 

Cas left the window and rounded the bed, stopping only a few inches from Dean. 

“It bothers you, my relationship with Meg.”

Without meaning to, Dean smiled, a quirk of his lips he knew could come across as cocky or leering. He wasn’t wanting either one, but he couldn’t straighten his mouth out. 

“Hey, whatever gets your motor running,” he said. 

“Dean,” Cas said. “Are you concerned I’m going to build a friendship with Bela? Or is this about something else?”

Not biting on the Meg issue. Okay, then.

Dean wasn’t expecting Cas to reach up and stroke his cheek with backs of his fingers, the knuckles just pressing against Dean’s skin. Cas’ curled hand settled against Dean’s neck, his other hand moving to Dean’s hip. This was all still so new that it stopped any words Dean might have been aiming for.

“You’re worried,” Cas said. “Knowing who to trust is part of it, but you’re more worried about me.”

He sounded wondering. 

“Of course I’m fucking worried about you,” Dean said, Cas’ understanding shaking his words loose. “I thought you were dead. Again. Because of this. If Bela’s wrong, we have to come up with something else. And she’s burned us in the past.”

“Meg took away Bobby’s ability to walk,” Cas said, “and she helped you more than once later on. You left her watching over me.”

Dean couldn’t say that, at the time, he’d still been so angry, so lost at what Cas had done, that he’d not given that as much thought as he should have done. Cas had been so distant, the gap between human and angel only widened by secrets and lying and a break in Cas’ mind, that Dean hadn’t fully considered Meg might be able to hurt Cas. Not until later, when he’d sat awake while Sam slept, fretting that she might do something awful. 

Even then, he hadn’t gone back until she’d called to say Cas was awake. 

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, even though Cas couldn’t know everything he was apologising for.

“My point is that you’ve had a demon on your side before, and that’s before we consider Crowley,” Cas said, apparently not interested in how the situation with Meg related to him.

“We never trusted Crowley.”

“Maybe not. But you did involve him in your plans. You did rely on him for certain things, at certain times. And Bela has a reason to help. She has Hannah.”

“Who turned on you more than once.”

Cas closed his eyes, just for a second, and when he opened them he pushed up and pressed his lips to Dean’s. 

It was one way to end a discussion.

Dean had Cas pulled close, had his arms wrapped around the guy, by the time Cas ended the kiss, pulling back just far enough to speak.

“We don’t have to fully trust either one of them, but they have saved us since returning, and I see no deception in them. We’ll check everything, as far as we can, but unless we have a better idea, being eaten up by worry isn’t going to help. I suggest you find a way to relax.”

That had to be a come-on. Yeah, the first clue was really more the kiss, and one of Cas’ hands had trailed its way down to Dean’s ass, but somehow the comment at the end there was still a surprise.

“Oh, really?” Dean asked. “Why don’t you show me how.”

Cas did.


	16. Chapter 16

Castiel followed Dean downstairs, the trailing wisps of pleasure still curling in his Grace. Sex with Dean had been every bit as interesting, as enjoyable, as he’d hoped it would be, when he’d let himself think about it at all. 

Hannah had shared notes with him at Sam’s impromptu party, and they’d agreed that a physical relationship was more valuable than either one of them could have believed just a few years ago. Even with such limited evidence to work with, so early on in a relationship Castiel hoped to experience for years, he knew this was something he wanted to keep.

Hannah wanted to keep her demon, as well. 

Given the way Bela’s hair was mussed and the eddies in Hannah’s Grace, Dean and Castiel weren’t the only ones to have let themselves be distracted while claiming a room. Given the look on Sam’s face, none of them were fooling him. Castiel decided he didn’t care.

Dean nodded to Sam and turned his attention on Bela, who had several items lines up on the coffee table in the middle of the living room. 

“So what’s this plan?”

Bela gestured for them to sit, and they ended up seated around the table. It was nothing like any other preparation for battle Castiel had experienced. Then again, he normally didn’t have Dean’s thigh pressed right up against his, either. Change could be a good thing.

“This can change you into a demon,” Bela said, waving a hand over the stone lamp she’d brought from the crate. 

Castiel had seen many such lamps over the years. His memories were hazy, something he’d come to understand was Naomi’s doing, but he did know he’d stood in vessels by lamplight, as far back as people had been in cities. Further. If this lamp did nothing magical, it’s age still made it precious in its own way.

“Good,” Dean said. “It does exactly what we’re trying to stop someone else from doing to me. What else have you got?”

“At least, it changes most people into a demon,” Bela said, as though Dean hadn’t spoken. “The rumors are that a woman managed to return to humanity, and when she used this she became something even more powerful. You were already something like a Knight, maybe more what with the Mark. Just imagine what you could be.”

“Again,” Dean said, and Castiel felt the pulse of something from him, coiling in dirty brown and nauseating yellow, “not the way we want to go with this.”

“Ah, but the lamp also let her give up her power and become herself again,” Bela says. “I have heard people talk about it as an origin for the story of the genie in the lamp. Only she was her own genie, of course.”

That wasn’t something Castiel had heard, but he hadn’t been everywhere at once and there was no telling what Naomi had wiped from his mind. He sat forward, looking more carefully at the lamp. There was certainly something woven through it which spoke of power, but he couldn’t tell what it was. It was old. 

“You intend for Dean to take on demonic powers and destroy the cultists,” Castiel said. “You think he can return to himself after that.”

Bela smiled.

“Simple, but effective.” When Dean didn’t look convinced, she became more urgent. “They aren’t going to stop, Dean. They need someone in charge, and you’re the heir by almost any measure.”

“Except I’m not a demon,” Dean said, and Castiel thought that only he heard the waver in Dean’s voice. “And this plan doesn’t have me taking the throne. Just, what, slaughtering everyone who wants to make me a Knight? Which I’ll be doing to stop them from doing it. That about sum it up?”

Bela shook her head, looking like she wanted to smack Dean with the lamp. The black smoke inside her body shifted and rose. She wasn’t anywhere near as thorny as Meg, but there was a shining obsidian core to her that made Castiel wary.

“Once you’ve taken the throne you can appoint a proxy, someone to oversee Hell on your behalf. And they don’t need to know you have this. As far as they’ll know, you’ll just be very, very good at playing human. Dean, think about it. You can order the demons to stay in Hell. You won’t have to hunt them anymore.”

Castiel felt shock, but it was distant. Maybe not even his own. Ruling Hell to curtail its power… It was an intriguing idea. Dangerous, distasteful, but interesting as a strategy. 

“Are you insane?” Dean asked. “This isn’t a plan to get rid of a few cultists. This is a power-play for all of Hell.”

He jolted to his feet, leaving Castiel feeling cold at his absence, and stalked away from the chairs. Castiel twisted to see Dean standing with his hands on his head, staring at nothing.

“Who exactly do you have in mind to be proxy?” Dean asked, voice harsh.

“It makes sense,” Hannah said, as though there’d already been a protest to Bela’s suggestion. 

“What makes sense?” Castiel asked, because Hannah had said nothing about any plan to put someone on the throne of Hell. 

He turned back to look at her and she was as earnest as ever. As earnest as she’d been when she’d taken his army from him or when she’d pretended to save him from torture. 

“Hell is meant to be ruled by an angel,” Bela said. “The level of devotion for Lucifer, even when he loathed them, is something no demon could ever manage. And they’ll accept Dean trusting you. It will work.”

This shock was his own. It wrapped around his Grace and almost choked him.

“Me?” Castiel asked, his voice rising. “You want me to take Hell’s Throne?”

“Why not?” Bela asked. “You’ve sat on it before. You’ve ruled Heaven, more or less, and you’ve declared yourself God on Earth. Why not take a turn at Hell?”

“You don’t have to stay there,” Hannah said. “Crowley didn’t. You know that. But Hell exists for a reason and wiping it out entirely… Well, that isn’t an option.”

He didn’t ask if that was because it would mean wiping out Bela.

“You’re the one with the demon lover,” Castiel said. “You rule Hell.”

“Hannah doesn’t have the rap sheet,” Bela cut in. “You do. They’ll accept you. Trust me. A lot of them consider you partway to demon trickster god already.”

But Castiel had been letting himself think about a future where Dean might ask him to stay in the Bunker. He’d let himself wonder what it would be like to build a life together properly. Throwing that away to rule in Hell, a place he’d spent more than enough time already, wasn’t something he could think about with ease. 

“Cas stays with me,” Dean said. “We can’t come up with another plan, we can go with me suiting up and taking them out, but Hell is not becoming our family business.”

Bela’s lips thinned into a tight line, but she fell silent. Castiel found some measure of peace in that. 

He tried not to let it bother him that neither Dean nor Sam had argued Castiel would be unsuited to the role, if Dean allowed it.


	17. Chapter 17

Castiel didn’t want the role, Hannah could see. But Castiel hadn’t wanted to lead them when they gathered against Metatron. He hadn’t really wanted to search for the angels who refused to return home. She doubted very much he’d wanted much of what had happened to him over the past years.

He’d done those things anyway.

Besides, Castiel just didn’t see the power he had. How compelling he was.

And he tried to do good, to be good, but he didn’t see how he inspired fear just as surely as he inspired love. She couldn’t think of any angel better suited to take the throne that had been Lucifer’s. 

Now, his newly returned Grace was a riot of colors and lightning, but she didn’t question him about it. Instead, she watched as he excused himself and left the room, waving Dean off when the hunter tried to follow. 

Dean left a minute or so later, in any case. Maybe to follow him. Maybe not.

“That wasn’t fair,” Sam said, when they were both gone. “Throwing that at them. At Cas. That wasn’t fair.”

Odd, that he seemed more protective of an angel than of his own brother.

“They just got over themselves and got together,” Sam said. “And they’ve both got all kinds of crap to sort through. And you suggest this? Becoming Hell’s ultimate power couple?”

Bela sparked, her smoke flaring up, and Hannah put out a hand to keep her from saying something which would make this harder.

“I only said what makes sense,” she said. “Sam, until Hell and Heaven are settled, it will only mean more trouble for your kind.”

“Cas has done enough-”

“Castiel is a soldier. And a Seraph. He needs a mission.”

Bela coughed when Sam and Hannah stared at each other. 

“We’ve said our bit,” she said, when Hannah turned to her. “Dean will think it over. If he refuses, we’ll think of something else.”

Sam looked like he was going to leave it, but as Hannah stood to follow Bela from the room, he spoke again.

“And what’s your mission? You’re an angel, too. What mission do you have?”

She had Heaven to help heal, a job Castiel couldn’t help with, not after being so directly involved in so much of the damage, but she didn’t want to explain it all to Sam now, to explain how the other angels Bela had managed to lead back to life were waiting for her. She didn’t want to explain how they’d met Gabriel and Anna and others, how they’d shown her how to create herself a body. Create one for Bela. 

There was too much to explain and it wasn’t that she wanted Castiel to be chained to Hell. Of course she didn’t. She was one of the few angels who still cared about him. But angels rarely got to do what they wanted, and Hell needed a ruler. And Heaven needed to know Castiel was somewhere he wouldn’t hurt the Host again. 

“There are more than enough missions,” she said. “This one is Castiel’s, if only he’ll see it. You once wanted to close the Gates of Hell, Sam. This is a way to close them without any of you dying. At least consider talking to them about it. You could live almost free of demons. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

She left then, sickened at playing the serpent, even if it was to make a necessary point.


	18. Chapter 18

“Cas?” 

Dean couldn’t see him at first, but once he made it down to the stream at the end of the garden he saw Cas standing staring at the water. Maybe he was thinking of another stream, back when Cas had thought he was meant to be in a different realm from Dean.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

They always seemed to be asking each other that question.

“They think I should atone in Hell,” Cas said.

He sounded shell-shocked.

“No-one said anything about atoning,” Dean said. “Hannah and Bela, they’re just thinking who might be up to the job. And you’ve got form for leading, no question. But I’m not naming you my Regent or whatever. I’m not even sure I’m gonna use the damn lamp. We can come up with another way.”

“What if we can’t? And you have to admit, Hell’s been a mess for years. And it only keeps causing trouble. This way, perhaps we can put an end to it for good. Order has to be better than chaos.”

“What happened to peace or freedom?” Dean asked. 

Cas glanced at him, but the trouble didn’t lift from his eyes.

“Cas, come on,” Dean said. “I’m not using you like that. And I’m not having anyone rip you up to make me a Knight, either. We’ll get rid of these cultists, we’ll come up with some solution for Hell, and we’ll move you into the Bunker properly. You understand?”

Cas’ eyes widened a little, and Dean had time to realize what he’d said. Well, screw it. He wanted Cas to stay. He wanted Cas to be with him. So it wasn’t the most romantic of proposals, if you could call this a proposal, but they weren’t the romance types. Cas just needed to know he was wanted. And Dean wanted him. 

“Yes,” Cas said. “Yes, I understand. We’ll find another way.”

Dean just wished he had even a single idea as to what.

**********************************************

The lamp was older than human civilization, or so Cas said. Dean wasn’t sure what to make of that. 

“And I just light the wick?” he asked. “That’s really it? I don’t have to rub it?”

“You can if it makes you feel better,” Bela said. “I won’t hold it against you.”

Next to him, Cas made an unhappy noise, and Dean resisted the impulse to reach out and soothe the angel. He’d done as much soothing as he could overnight, showing Cas exactly how good Dean’s mouth could be just in case something went wrong and that was the last chance he got. 

After, with Cas tucked up in Dean’s arms, his head under Dean’s chin and his hair tickling Dean’s throat, they’d talked. Dean had to tell Cas three times that he wasn’t going to end up in Hell, and four times that Dean would give up the powers and be human again.

“Look, that ancient woman did it,” Dean had said. “It can’t be like when I turned last time. This must have more control. And I turned back from being a vampire under my own steam. You just gotta believe me. I am coming back to you.”

But Cas, for whatever reason, had refused to let Dean go alone. 

Now, Dean rolled his eyes at Bela, shared a look with Sam, who was pale and tense looking, and lit the wick. 

At first, nothing happened. The wick caught, flame flickering in a way that told Dean the far distant past hadn’t been blazing with light at night, and that was it.

“Do I have to recite some spell?” Dean asked.

“No,” Bella said. “Just be patient.”

Moments later, a red glow seeped down the side of the lamp, outlining a symbol Dean didn’t know. Cas, however, sat forward with recognition on his face.

“That’s an old dialect of Enochian,” he said. “A form corrupted by Lucifer.”

The sigil faded, but Dean felt heat flare on his skin and looked down to see the shape form in red lines on his forearm. With it, he felt that disquieting sensation of sliding smoke in the flesh beneath it. It was working.

A second symbol formed on the lamp, and disappeared onto Dean’s back. Then a third to this chest. A fourth to his abdomen. 

They sped up, each one bringing more smoke and ash with it, until Dean felt the film slip over his eyes and looked at the world through the warped perceptions of a demon.

Bela was beautiful: sharp and shining black. She smiled at him, an expression which him want to tear at her until she only ever smiled for him, with his permission. He shook the feeling off.

Turning his head, he saw Hannah for the fist time through these eyes, and she shone. Her light was bright and brilliant, white with just an edge of Arctic blue, and tendrils of her light reached out for Bela. Bela lit up with sparks where those tendrils touched her.

Sam looked much the same, but the pain in his eyes was enough to have Dean wanting to smirk. He didn’t. He was still enough himself, under it all, to want to spare his brother further pain.

Which left Cas.

Cas, who was twice as brilliant as Hannah. His Grace was twisted through with black and grey, parts of him warped or wavering. He’d not noticed before, the last time has was a demon, but Cas was mangled. Part of Dean delighted in that.

A final sigil flared into place, and Dean felt the surge of power right down to his marrow.

“How are you?” Cas asked, the love in his eyes almost sickening. 

“Peachy,” Dean said. “Let’s go skin us some Dean worshipers.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, clearly this is taking me far, far longer than it was meant to, but so it goes. It could wrap up in a few more little sections, now, though the idea of playing with demon Dean for longer is also kind of appealing. But I want to focus on my other ones - this was only meant to be a cleanser - so it'll likely be the shorter option.

Sam tracked demon signs to a suite of offices in Seattle, and when Dean insisted on transporting Castiel and himself there right away Sam had to argue hard to stop him.

“You always used to complain about Cas flying off by himself,” Sam said, noting the startled look on Cas’ face at that and regretting reminding the angel about the loss of his wings. “Just drive there. You like to drive.”

“I live to drive,” Dean said, the light dancing in his eyes all the more disturbing for the fact his eyes could flicker to black without warning. “But the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can scrape the black from my eyes and get back to showing Cas around the bedroom.”

“Yeah, Dean, I’m not helping you with that,” Sam said, because there was something a bit too relaxed about his brother’s appetites when he was like this. “And you can wait long enough for us to drive there.”

Somehow, Sam ended up driving with Bela and Hannah in their huge vehicle, leaving Cas and Dean to ride in the Impala.

“They’re probably going to pull over and make use of the back-seat,” Bela helpfully pointed out as the Impala vanished into the distance. “Oh, don’t look like that, Sam. As though you haven’t had sex in that car.”

“I really don’t want to think about Dean’s sex life,” Sam said. “I saw enough of it when we were younger, thanks.”

“You’d rather focus on Castiel’s sex life?” Bela asked. 

It was a long drive.

Seattle was coated in a fine mist when they pulled up and Bela cut the engine, leaving the headlights on as she checked their location was right. 

“It should be just across the street,” she said. “Does anyone need a rest break before we get to it? You can’t decide you want to go later.”

Sam’s door was yanked open before he could get to it, and Dean leaned in, looking for too pleased with himself. And with black eyes.

“Relax, Sammy,” he said, voice close to a purr, “just eager to get on with it. Come on. I’ll even let you kill a few of them.”

Behind him, Cas stood in jeans and a black shirt, his blade in his hand. He looked on edge. Sam wondered exactly how the guy felt about his newly acquired boyfriend turning Knight of Hell, or whatever exactly Dean was. Cas’ hair was damp, flattened, and it looked like he’d been out in the mist for a while. 

“You’ve been standing out waiting for us?” Sam asked. 

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

Sliding out of the car, Sam bypassed Dean and headed to Cas.

“You up for this?” he asked the angel.

The look Cas gave him almost made him retract the question. Still, Cas had a habit of throwing himself into things which were only going to hurt him. Sam at least had to ask.

“I’ll be fine,” Cas said, which was a step worse than usual. “I just want this done.”

Hannah had her own blade out and Bela carried a gun as they joined Sam and Cas, Dean pacing behind them, the black eyes and red shirt making him look truly murderous. 

“You’re certain this is them?” Bela asked.

Sam didn’t bother answering. He was sure the signs pointed to demons. If they were the right demons was a matter of question, but some of the ingredients Bela said were needed for their spell had been bought from places nearby in the last few days, so it was at least a decent chance.

Apparently bored of waiting, Dean stalked past them and disappeared into the mist, not looking back to see who was coming. He must have known they’d all follow him. Or else he didn’t care.

“Do we have any way to force him back if he doesn’t come back willingly?” he asked Cas as they crossed the street side by side.

“We can try lighting the lamp,” Cas said. “It should reverse the process. In theory.”

In theory. Great. Always a solid bet. 

Squaring his shoulders, Sam resolved that his brother would be coming back with him, and would be losing the black eyes. One way or another. 

*************************************

It was the right group of demons. One of them, anyway. 

Dean flung the doors open with a flick of the wrist. From eight feet away. Sam did his best not to react to that as he flanked Dean into the room, Cas on the other side, Hannah and Bela behind them. 

“Hey, boys,” Dean said, despite the fact at least half of the room was full of demons wearing women. “I’m home. Who’s got a hug for me?”

And he held his arms out wide.

If Dean was expecting to be rushed, he was wrong. The demons looked at him, a few glanced at each other, and they folded to their knees. One demon, a woman with tight black plaits and dark skin, stayed on her feet, bowing.

“Master,” she said. “King.”

Dean turned back to the rest of his group, smirking, his arms still wide, and span back to face the demons. 

“Now that I think about it, that has a nice ring to it.”

Dean snapped his fingers, and Sam found himself alone in the room with Hannah.


	20. Chapter 20

Bela landed on her hands and knees, the transition rough and inescapable. Rock beneath her palms gave her a clue about where she was, rock which soaked heat right into her skin. She didn’t want to look.

But she’d made it a point to face everything in her life. Even trying to find a trade to get out of her deal had been active. She hadn’t just sat around and waited for ten years, putting it out of her mind as so many future-demons did. 

Pushing herself upright, she saw the vast reaches of a plain in Hell, the red and grey striated rock disappearing into the distance, columns rising as jagged poles into the heights above. 

At least there weren’t any flames. It escaped that cliche.

Ahead of her, Dean stood surrounded by demons, still on their knees, with the woman who had bowed standing before him with awe on her face. A few feet to the side of Dean, Castiel did not look as impressed.

He also didn’t look as human as he managed on Earth, the air shimmering around his head and at his back as aspects of his real self reacted to the location. It wouldn’t take much for his wings to manifest. Or wouldn’t have, back when he was whole. 

“Dean,” Castiel said, taking a half step towards his lover. 

Dean’s smile only grew as he turned to face Castiel, and Bela found herself moving back as subtly as she could. She couldn’t afford to draw any ire here. Knowledgeable she was, and she’d achieved something previously unknown in slipping through angel Heaven, but she was far from powerful as a demon.

“Cas,” Dean said, the name a caress. “How’d you like your new home?”

“This is not your home, Dean,” Castiel hissed. 

“Oh, but it is, Angel,” Dean said. “And now it’s yours, too. What?” He closed the gap between them, standing near enough to Castiel to reach out and trail a finger down the angel’s cheek. Castiel looked like he wanted to turn away, but he didn’t. “You didn’t think I’d leave you behind, did you, Sweetheart?” 

Dean leaned in and brushed a kiss against Castiel’s lips, sliding his hand around the back of Castiel’s head. From the stiffness in Castiel’s body it wasn’t returned. Pulling back, Dean tutted.

“Don’t worry, Cas. You’ll come round. Give it a while, you’ll be happy sitting on your own throne next to mine.”

At that, the lead demon shot a look at Castiel that cast severe doubt on Bela’s plan to establish Castiel as the Regent in Dean’s place. 

“Sire-” she started.

“No,” Dean said, cutting her off. “Some of you might have had some cockamamie scheme to use Cas as Knight-fuel, but it turns out that wasn’t needed. Here I am. All of me. Worked out pretty well, didn’t it?”

There was a sway to Dean’s body that hadn’t been there before, and he ran his hands down his torso and over his hips in a move Bela was sure was more at home on a certain type of stage. This was not the Dean she was used to, cocky and flustered by turns. This Dean was at home in his body and not afraid to use it.

“Very well, Sire,” the demon said. She looked borderline transfixed.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “So there’s no need to be anything but welcoming to my Queen, now is there?”

“Queen?” Castiel asked. 

Bela almost laughed, but she was almost sure the shock and disgust in the angel’s tone was nothing to do with gender. Hannah certainly didn’t get gender. Not the way someone born into a world obsessed with it did. Even having spent time as a human, Castiel was more likely to be outraged at the idea of Dean taking the throne at all, and assigning Castiel a seat by his side. 

Yet Bela could have sworn Castiel was at least a little interested in the idea of Dean taking power and putting someone in place as his proxy. He was a warrior, better suited to winning a field than to tending it long-term, but from what Hannah had said he wasn’t afraid of tough choices, or morally dubious ones.

There were too many currents here to be sure of anything, and Bela was all too aware she was one of only two demons on her feet. Not counting Dean.

“And my handmaiden, here. She gets her ass kissed, too. You hear?”

She was so busy working out how to play this that she almost missed Dean throwing his arm out in her direction. 

“Bela,” Dean said, clicking his fingers.

She had her pride, but more than anything else Bela had always been a survivor. She went.


	21. Chapter 21

Sam startled at Hannah’s hand on his arm. Turning, he found the angel shaking her head, looking concerned.

“Sam, there’s nothing here we can use. I saw the pulse around Dean as they went. He transported them. He did this.”

“The plan was to end them,” Sam said. “Not jump into bed with them.”

Hannah glanced away, looking back a moment later with a frown.

“Perhaps Dean and Castiel have a plan beyond what we’ve decided.”

“There shouldn’t be a plan we don’t all know about,” Sam said, leaning a little to bring himself closer to Hannah’s height. “How do you know Dean hasn’t just…just been turned. You didn’t see him when he was a demon before. He tried to kill me. Me. He sold his soul for me. Did you know that? And he tried to… Fuck.”

Sam turned around, taking three long steps away from Hannah, his hands pushed into his hair. 

“If he’s really gone dark-side,” Sam said, “then we could have just lost all of them.”

“Bela and Castiel are there, too,” Hannah said. “They’re survivors. Castiel is one of the best tacticians I’ve ever known. Bela knows how to plan almost anything to her advantage. If Dean has turned, and we don’t know he has, they’ll see this mission completed.”

She sounded so certain. Sam knew certainty, knew how it felt in his gut, and he knew how often it blinded or misled. 

“What if they don’t see the mission the same way?” he asked. “Might not be to Bela’s advantage to get Dean and Cas back up here. She’s not exactly Dean’s biggest fan, and she barely knows Cas.”

“She knows me,” Hannah said. “She’ll come back to me. And she’ll do her best to bring them with her.”

But Sam knew someone’s best didn’t always mean squat, not when the stakes were high. Hell, sometimes even when it was meant to be a cake-walk. There was every chance not everyone would make it back. Not alive. 

********************************************

Castiel went where Dean told him to, crossing the plain at Dean’s side. He didn’t try to catch Dean’s eye, or talk to him. The demons around them might be pretending to accept him, for Dean’s sake, but Castiel had been in too many situations where those on his side would turn on him given even a slight chance, and he knew the signs. These demons would strip him from Dean’s side and consider it a service to their new king. 

He didn’t know about Bela, either. She’d kept her distance until Dean called, coming to his side when summoned and from then on giving every appearance of being in her element. She was the one who’d provided the lamp, who’d suggest this plan. Perhaps this had been her aim all along. 

It felt like subjective hours had passed by the time they reached the sharp upsweep of rock Dean had commanded they head to. By then, they had a crowd walking with them, the eddies of satisfaction, relief, delight, clear in each demon, whether they wore a human form or not. 

So far, no-one had given any indication that they were against Dean or his impending reign. Castiel found it hard to believe. There would be snakes in the grass, wanting to take Dean down. 

Gates in the rock creaked open at Dean’s gesture, the smirk on his face making this almost obscenely easy. 

Inside, the space became a cavern carved in symbols that made Castiel want to tear off his human skin and escape. They were old sigils, twisted and corrupted and banned in Heaven, and he was surrounded by them. Dean expected him to stay here, surrounded by them. 

Unless Dean was faking. 

“Home sweet home,” Dean said, drawing Castiel’s attention from the symbols and down to a carved stone seat. “What do you think, Cas? You want one the same?”

And Dean lifted his hand, fingers twitching.

“No,” Cas said. Blurted out, really. 

Dean raised an eyebrow.

“No?” he asked, as though not quite able to believe that. He sounded amused, just, but Castiel would have to be very stupid indeed not to notice the darker current. “You just say ‘no’ to me, Angel?”

If Dean was play-acting this, he was doing a disturbingly good job. Castiel had never been good at acting, but he needed to find a way to play this right. He lowered his eyes, bringing his wings in close and dimming his Grace. A show of subservience could make him a target, but it might also secure him solid footing. 

“I shouldn’t have a throne like yours,” he said. He had to take a moment before going on, his throat working around the title. “My king.”

He watched Dean through his eye-lashes on his human vessel, through every working eye on his true-form, and saw Dean throw back his head and laugh.

“You know, I like that. You knowing your place.” Dean pointed at Castiel and it was all too clear he’d like to be pointing with a knife. The wrist movement, the way he held his fingers, made one almost visible. “We’ll have to see how else you can show me you know it.” 

And he winked. Castiel saw several demons smile, heard them laugh their approval. If he had to play this role, truly, then he would, but he made note of every demon which showed pleasure at Dean speaking to him that way. 

“For now, I see your point. Maybe something fitting of your status.”

Dean gestured and a second seat emerged from the ground, growing up from the rock and forming into a plainer version of the throne, with fewer carvings. It still held sigils Castiel wished weren’t there, and it still had a high back which would put the central symbol above Castiel’s head when he sat.

He needed to know where Dean had learned those sigils. When Castiel sat in that chair, it would hold him. Tether him. That didn’t seem like something Dean would do if this were part of a con. 

“Have a seat, Cas,” Dean said, sweeping his arm out in invitation.

With the collected gaze of hundreds of demons on him, and Dean giving him no sign of a way out, Castiel glanced at Bela to find her looking just as expectant as any other demon. He couldn’t tell if it was faked.

“Very well,” he said.

And took the seat Dean had made for him.


	22. Chapter 22

Sam paced around the motel room he’d booked, ignoring the way Hannah kept looking at him. She could tell him there was no point staying here all she wanted, but just in case it turned out this place was significant, Sam wasn’t turning tail and running right off.

“We can try a summoning,” Sam said. 

“We can,” Hannah said, but the way she said it made it sound like she wasn’t on board. 

“Why not?”

Hannah turned as Sam did, keeping him in sight, and that wasn’t at all weird. Sam had got used to Cas and his staring, but it was occurring to him that Cas rarely fixed on Sam the way he did on Dean. That made sense. As far as Sam knew, Cas had never wanted to jump Sam’s bones the way he clearly had Dean’s. Turned out, angelic focus was…a lot.

“If Dean is planning something, we could interrupt it,” Hannah said. “If not, we need more than we have here to defend against a Knight of Hell. Castiel at full strength could, perhaps, fight one, but I couldn’t.”

“Cas didn’t do so well against Cain,” Sam said, remembering the way Cas had limped away from the being thrown into a pile of crates or something when they’d faced off against Cain in that barn.

Hannah shook her head.

“He wasn’t at full strength. Besides, I said maybe.”

“And you’re both angels. Both, what is it? Both seraphs?”

Hannah shook her head again. Sam was starting to hate that.

“No. Castiel is a seraph. I’m not. I’d have no real chance against a Knight, though I will try, if I have to.”

Sam span around and stalked the length of the room again, pressing a thumb into the palm of his other hand. Right over his scar.

“Suppose storming Hell’s out, too, then,” he said.

Hannah said nothing. In fact, she said nothing so loudly that Sam found himself stopping and facing her. She had a look on her face he couldn’t quite place.

“Wait. Are you…are you saying we could storm Hell? Isn’t that harder than taking on a Knight?”

“Not necessarily,” Hannah said. “Harder for me to survive it than for Castiel to survive it. But I could get us in. I’m just not sure I can keep either one of us safe once we’re there.”

“But we’d be there if Dean needs us. Or if he needs bringing back from…from being that thing,” Sam said, taking a few steps towards Hannah. He still had a tight grip on his own hand. “We could help. Better than being stuck here.”

“We could be in the Bunker,” Hannah said. “Where you have more resources.”

It was Sam’s turn to shake his head. 

“If you can get us into Hell, then get us into Hell. What do you need?”


	23. Chapter 23

Bela stood near Dean’s throne, tempted to admire the rows of demons on their knees. Whatever else she had to say about Dean, he knew how to play a room. And there was none of that sense he’d had in his younger days, back when they’d both been human, that he might shed the role at any time with a quip and a wink. No. Now, he was committed. 

She pushed down on that wriggling element of hope that this was all a ploy, that she’d see Hannah again. She couldn’t afford to think that way, even if she kept it to herself. Playing the role was important for her, too. If this did turn out to be Dean taking the throne, for real, and keeping it, then at least Bela had a place. A respected place, as far as it went.

She’d already been able to use her influence to settle a few debts from the past years, and she’d done it out in the open, with Dean’s full support. 

Castiel had looked less impressed. 

Then again, Castiel looked to be one step from panic. Bela knew enough, from her painstaking research, to know that Dean had essentially trapped Castiel on that stone seat. She didn’t think Dean would leave the angel there for good, some living statue celebrating Dean’s power, but in theory it was something he could do. And if Dean Winchester, breaker of bonds and denier of destiny, was willing to lock his own lover in place like that, there was no telling what else he’d do. Maybe, in his demonic state, he would place sigils to demand Castiel’s obedience. 

It was ironic, that bit of lore. Angelic, but an angel couldn’t enact it. Something about needing to come from free will in order to override it. 

She wasn’t sure how she’d feel about it, if Dean broke Castiel, kept him as some sort of trophy. The seraph was similar enough to Hannah that Bela felt…something. 

She snapped back to the scene in front of her as Dean waved and the demons bowed, rose and vanished, leaving the huge chamber almost empty. 

“So far, so good,” Dean said, possibly to himself. 

The fingers of his right hand tapped at an arm of the throne, a staccato rhythm which almost resolved itself into something Bela knew. Almost. Dean shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. He buzzed with energy, with drive. Bela saw his smoke billow and coil.

“You know,” Dean said, to the four other demons still present, “I was promised adoration. My richest dreams. But I just feel not everyone’s on board. You getting that?”

He stopped in front of a demon who’d taken a middle-aged businessman as a host, acting for all the world as though this guy’s opinion mattered. The demon nodded, not quite managing to hide the twitch at being singled out by this new king.

“Sure you do,” Dean said. “It’s a sour note in a chord. Can’t stand that. There’s someone here who’s not thrilled to see me take my crown.”

Spinning, Dean turned his back on the demon and faced Castiel. The angel was already watching him. He was always watching Dean, Bela had noticed, even before this. Now, it was with a greater degree of wariness.

“What say you, Castiel, Angel of the Lord? You think there could be someone who wants me toppled from my thrown? Thrown from it.”

And Dean grinned, posing with his arms out as though he expected anyone to laugh at that. Of course, within seconds the four demons behind him did laugh, and Bela forced herself not to murder them on the spot. She could see the way Dean’s eyes slid to her, checking her reaction. She met his gaze, raising an eyebrow. 

Dean didn’t need her to be a sycophant. He had enough of those already. She didn’t really believe he wanted that from Castiel, either. No. If Dean wasn’t playing at this, he would want to break the angel, not have him faking.

“Awfully quiet there, Cas,” Dean said, snapping his eyes back to the still figure before him. 

Castiel gripped the arms of the stone seat, the heat in his eyes unmistakable. Bela could almost see his wings, flexing and settling, flexing again. She could almost see the bonds that held him in place. Since he’d sat in the chair, Dean hadn’t let him leave it.

“What would you have me say?” Castiel asked, his tone managing to be civil. Subservient, almost. 

“Only what you want to, Cas,” Dean said, sauntering closer and leaning forward, a hand on either one of Castiel’s wrists. “You’ve tried your hand at leading minions. What do you think I should do to dig out the dissenters? Go on. You’ve got to have some ideas.”

“They’ll come to you,” Castiel said, and the way he had to look up at Dean from so close made him look even more trapped. “You shouldn’t waste your time hunting them.”

“But I like hunting,” Dean said. “Love it. Live for it. So I’m going to have to ignore you, there, Angel.”

Bela watched in something approaching genuine awe as Dean ordered the demons waiting on him to fetch hell hounds, to summon a group of demons they felt could be trusted. She nodded, even bowed, when she was ordered to stay and wait on the Queen. She noted the quirk of Dean’s mouth as he said that, and filed it away to think about later.

Before long, she was alone with Castiel in an echoing chamber of sigil carved stone. 

“How trapped are you?” she asked, once she’d swept the room, checking as well as she could for anything beyond the obvious level of observation. 

Some of the sigils would alert whomever had most recently claimed the throne if their presence was needed, and Bela didn’t have the juice to break those. She did mask them. Just enough. With luck, Dean wouldn’t notice. Everything had to be buzzing and roaring in him now.

She stood a few body-lengths from Castiel, just in case an angry angel could do her harm here, even bound, and watched as his head came up, eyes blazing. Literally blazing. 

“Castiel?”

He didn’t answer, but the way he gritted his teeth made her fall silent, watching. The chamber hummed, vibrations running through it, and Castiel strained, cords on his neck standing out. The bands Dean’s sigils had fastened around the angel sparked, making them visible in lines of white flame, and Bela saw them wrapped securely around Castiel’s wrist, around his neck and chest, around his thighs and ankles. Only his wings were free, and they blazed into reality, too, bursting black and shining into being.

They sparked with the same white fire as the bands, and with the same blue fire as his Grace, and she couldn’t tell what was natural and what was a result of Castiel fighting the sigils. 

Each wing flapped, four of them, then two, then six, like Castiel couldn’t decide how many he should have. 

The air in the chamber buffeted Bela, forcing her to work on her stance and raise a hand in front of her face to protect her eyes. She wanted to cover her ears, too, as the whining, screaming noise rose from something felt in her jaw and in her spine to something which might split her apart. 

“Castiel!” she yelled. “Stop this! You’ll bring the place down on us!”

It cut off. 

Silence dropped heavy and dull into the space, and she lowered her hand to see Castiel gasping, his head back against the seat and his wings, settled on just the one pair, draped along the floor. He was sweating.

“What was that?” she demanded, even though she knew.

Hannah could be still and patient and controlled, but she was a creature of flight and of fire and of action, and Castiel was stronger. He hadn’t been, when they’d carried him from that room with the collar around his neck, but he was now. 

It must be painful to him, to be tied down like this.

Not that anyone would enjoy it, as such.

Crossing to him, she observed him closely for a few moments.

“Are you going to attack me?”

“No,” he said. Grated, really. His throat must be wrecked.

“Good. Then, hold still.”

Hesitantly, she set the back of her hand against his forehead. A pointless gesture in a lot of ways, but it made her feel more like she was trying something.

“You’re burning up,” she said.

“Yes. I need to get out of here.”

There was a panicked edge to his voice, and Bela felt something in her twist. She could imagine Hannah in this chair, all too easily. She could imagine how Hannah would feel about Castiel being trapped in this chair, as well. 

“Dean wants you here,” she said, telling herself that Castiel couldn’t know where her loyalties lay, not unless she was sure of him. He could be testing her. “You want to please Dean, don’t do?”

If Castiel was testing Bela, he was doing a very good job of it. The look he shot her was poisonous. 

“Dean needs to get out of here. He needs to finish this and leave. He doesn’t belong here.”

“It’s his throne,” Bela said, injecting every ounce of sincerity into the words that she could. “A king should be with his throne. And his Queen should be loyal.”

“He isn’t mean to rule Hell,” Castiel said. He must have damaged his vessel’s throat with the screaming just now. “I need to take him home. He needs to be home.”

“He is home,” Bela said, though she was starting to think Castiel meant what he said, that he wasn’t testing her and he wasn’t in on any plan of Dean’s to pretend this king thing was a good idea. She let herself feel fear, a pure shot of it, before clamping down. “If you love him, you’ll not try to take him from it. Not that you could.”

She moved just in time to avoid Castiel’s wings, which rose and beat the air with such power she fell from the draft of air. From the floor, she looked up and spat hair out of her face. Until she saw which way this was going, she wasn’t going to show her hand, however much it upset the angel.

“You can’t go against him,” she said, knowing she sounded gleeful. “You’re nothing but his plaything if that’s what he wants, and I’m not taking Dean’s toys from him. I’m not that stupid.”

She rose to her feet, brushing off the dust from the floor, and smiled.

“Now, is there anything I can get for you. My Queen?”


	24. Chapter 24

Sam wasn’t happy. That much was clear. He drove the Impala back to the Bunker, roaring ahead of Hannah in her larger car, and she knew he was resentful of the time spent on the journey. It couldn’t be helped. 

Hannah was at full strength, but compared to the difficulty of breaking into Hell that meant nothing. Sam seemed to think it should be easier, citing his passage through Purgatory and the time Crowley had brought them into an offshoot of his territory to see Lucifer. 

Hannah just stared at him until he gave up arguing. Neither one of those was the same as this. Rogue Reapers and back doors and special passes. The Winchesters had become far too used to getting where they needed to be, but Crowley was dead and Billie had the Reapers back in line. Hannah wasn’t about to interfere with that. 

She wasn’t entirely sure how Billie would react to the knowledge that Hannah and others had returned from whatever realm she’d been in. Drawing attention to it seemed unwise.

It was only because the realms were out of alignment that she had a chance of sneaking them in to Hell at all. Even with the boost offered by the ritual they’d perform at the Bunker, with materials she couldn’t find easily without the use of her wings, it was going to be a difficult and taxing transition. At least, if they wanted an escape route.

Sam railed at that, arguing they should worry about that later. If Hannah could get them into Hell immediately, he said, then she should. 

Hannah refused.

“Last minute salvations are done with,” she reminded him. “At least, you need to stop relying on them. This way gives us a way in and a way out. We’re doing it this way.”

So Sam gave in, because he had no other choice, and he drove.

Hannah was glad of the time on her own, time to put her thoughts in order. 

She missed Bela. She missed the demon’s spikiness and her determination and her ability to act as though she was completely in control even when Hannah knew a good part of what Bela had gone through, even before death. Bela gave the impression she would survive anything, even if she didn’t survive without cracks. In a world where so much had been lost, Hannah found that comforting. 

Had found it comforting. 

She didn’t need Bela back. She’d lost too many by now to think any one loss would end her. But she wanted her back, very badly indeed. 

She wasted no time once she was back at the Bunker, pulling the ingredients together and readying the bronze bowl in which she’d assemble them. Sam practically vibrated with urgency and she had to tune him out.

Finally, she could tell him to come closer, and painted the sigils onto his palms.

“You need to avoid washing those off,” she said. “If they’re washed off, or altered, they won’t grant exit.”

Sam nodded, but she wasn’t certain he was listening to her. 

“Sam?” She waited until his eyes met hers. “Sam, this is important. I know you want Dean back. I want Bela back. But we can’t skip over the details. And we have to be practical. You can’t turn this into some suicide mission.”

He blinked at that, his head moving back as though she’s pushed it. It took him a moment before he responded.

“Trust me,” he said, “I’ve done more than enough stupid stuff to get Dean back. Look, I can’t promise I won’t take risks with my own life, and I know that’s screwed up, but I’ve sworn to change that before and… Well.”

He looked away and took a breath. She gave him a few seconds.

“Just because you’ve fallen into old patterns before is no reason to give into it,” she said. “You think it was easy for me, to change and grow after eons of being an obedient angel to Raphael?” 

She saw surprise again and considered that he might not have known her old role, healing. He perhaps hadn’t really known what Raphael’s role was before all that tangled mess with the End Days. They didn’t have time for that now.

“Do you think it was easy for Castiel, to change as much as he has? And he’s still trying, isn’t he? I saw it, when I traveled with him. You can’t know how hard it is for angels to do that, so if he can adapt, you can at least try.”

He didn’t answer, but he nodded, a jerk of his chin that could have meant anything. It would have to do. If Sam put Bela, or Castiel, at risk by going to typical Winchester lengths to save his brother, she’d have to do something about it. 

Dean, she could live without. She was willing to accept Castiel would likely not be so sanguine about Dean’s loss, and she would do her best to get them all back out, but she could only do so much.

She was going after her lover and her brother.


	25. Chapter 25

Castiel strained his senses, but the sigils on the chair, which trapped and bound him, also essentially blinded him. Dean turning to dark smoke had changed the texture of the man’s thoughts, the colored edges and shifting shapes Castiel could sometimes glimpse, but the chair had cut them off entirely.

Bela sprawled on a low bench by the far wall, inspecting some blade she’d picked up and casting looks his ways when she seemed to think he wasn’t looking. He couldn’t see her smoke, either. 

“You can’t think this will end well,” Castiel said, not bothering to pitch his voice louder than he would if Bella were standing right by his chair. She may or may not deign to reply in any case. She was either sticking to her cover or had really decided to follow Dean’s new demonic lead. Castiel tried hard not to feel sick. “Either Dean is playing them, in which case going along with it too well could end with you creating a rope for you own neck, or he’s actually been corrupted. If that’s the case-”

“Then I’ll survive, angel,” Bela said. “I’ve survived worse.”

Castiel was less than sure of that. Dean as a demon the last time seemed to be mostly drinking and singing and killing whoever was thrown at him, right up until he decided to go after Sam. Dean as a demon was terrifying because Dean was terrifying. Dean without his empathy and his sense of justice was more dangerous than most things Castiel had hunted in his long life. 

He opened his mouth to try again, but a crack and flash of light rocked the cavern, and Bella was on her feet and across the space before it was done with. 

She vanished outside and Castiel made a fresh attempt to get loose. 

He stopped when Bela reappeared, leading two familiar figures into the cavern. 

“Sam,” Castiel called out. “Hannah. What-?”

“A spell, Castiel,” Hannah said, arriving by his side with worry in her eyes and her blade in her hand. “We need to get you out of here. Now.”

“Not without Dean,” Sam said, and Castiel had heard that note in the man’s voice before. 

“Of course not without Dean,” he said. “But Hannah, these sigils, I can’t-”

“Let me,” Bela said, rolling her eyes and sliding up next to Hannah. Something in her posture had relaxed, for all she’d been practically lounging before. On the surface, at least. “Dean’s lost his mind, what there was of it,” she went on, running a hand over the sigils by Castiel’s forearm as she spoke over her shoulder to Hannah. “Either he really has gone for the whole new Monarch of the Fell Lands thing or he’s playing them, and if he’s playing then he’s got a lot better at it over the years.”

“Where is he now?” Sam asked. “He might need back-up.”

“Please,” Bela said, smirking. “If anything, he has more help than any one demonic king could need. And they’re out hunting down any of Dean’s remaining enemies. I have to say, Dean as leader of all Hell could be a real prospect, whatever anyone might feel about it. Ah, there we are. Hold on a tick.”

Castiel felt it as the binding gave, gasping and pulling his arm free as soon as it was released.

“What did you do?” Sam asked. 

“And why didn’t you do it sooner?” Castiel asked. 

Bela just stared at him.

“And I thought you were a tactician,” she said. “Weren’t you playing along as well? How would it have looked to Dean, if he fetched back up and found you wandering about free as a bird. He’d skewer me, if I was lucky.”

She possibly couldn’t help the fact her smirk looked suggestive. Possibly. 

“I wasn’t exactly as convincing as you were being,” Castiel said. “You were just acting until Sam and Hannah could arrive?”

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Bela said, turning to Hannah with an almost apologetic look on her face. “I hoped, of course. Besides, for all I knew, you were testing me, Castiel. Dean could have turned you. Knights of Hell have all sorts of powers, and that’s before we get to the power he has over you just by being Dean Winchester. But now Sam and Hannah are here, any plans to play along aren’t needed. By either of us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Sam said, and reached out a hand to stop Bela before she could reach down to undo the sigils on Castiel’s left ankle. “Cas, how sure are you Dean is acting?”

Castiel closed his eyes and sighed. He felt the muscle in his jaw tic, the one that never used to do that. Since being human, or close to human, he’d lost some of his control of his vessel. His body. Irritation was a much more physical thing than it used to be, as was panic.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Bela’s right. Dean’s either acting at his best, or he really has been swayed. That doesn’t mean we can’t sway him back. But…”

Sam frowns, crouching down and setting a hand over Castiel’s right hand, the one still bound. 

“But what, Cas?”

“If he is acting, it’s for a reason. And he locked me here. I can’t help but think…”

“If it’s part of Dean’s plan, he might need you to stay here,” Sam said. “Yeah, I had the same thought. But can we adjust it, so you aren’t actually stuck? Can we make it look like you are? Loosen the ropes, kind of thing?”

“With demonic sigils of this kind?” Bella asked. She looked at Sam and at Castiel as though they were stupid. “Demonic sigils of angelic origin, no less? You think it will be as simple as…as loosening the ropes?”

“Can you do it or not?” Sam asked.

Hannah put out a hand and rested it on Bela’s shoulder, and Bela tilted her head as though she wanted to lean down and press her cheek to it. 

“Fine. I can do it,” she said. “But the four of us need an actual plan. Dean might run on instinct and charm and a bull-headed belief his word shapes the universe, but the rest of us need something a little more concrete.”

But she worked on the sigils as Castiel and Hannah discussed options, Castiel tamping down on the hope that had flared when he saw his human brother and angelic sister stride in. He’d been fighting to free himself, because on his own, without even the dubious support of Bella, he’d needed to be able to fight to the full. But now he had two people he could trust, and he could afford to stay in the chair. To an extent, he could. 

As Sam threw in ideas and debated the ones put forward by the angels, Bella worked on, undoing and redoing each set of bindings until Castiel felt the pull but also the weakness. He could only hope she was as good as she seemed at this, and that Dean, and the other demons, wouldn’t notice it as soon as they came back. 

He dearly needed to get to the point where he wasn’t having to think of Dean as a demon. He hopes he wouldn’t have to instead get used to it, because Bela, for all her self-serving ways and smirking, had a point: if it came to it, Castiel wasn’t sure he could turn on Dean. Saving Dean was his preference, but if it came down to destroying him or joining him? Castiel only hoped he had the resolve to do what had to be done.


	26. Chapter 26

Dean watched the demon at his feet, watched its smoke coiling and writhing inside its human host, and saw the complete lack of any bright spark of human soul.

“Bet it drives you to distraction,” he said, reaching out his hand until the point of his dagger touched the demon’s throat. The thing couldn’t rock away from him, or lower its chin to present a smaller target, because Dean had another demon, one of the loyal ones, holding the thing’s head back by the hair. “Bet you just look at those of us with a soul and with power and want to scream, right? Want to tear into me? Rend me limb from limb?”

“No,” the demon managed, the word emerging weak and unconvincing.

“No?” Dean asked. “Well, now I gotta say, I doubt that. Because me? I kinda want to rend every single thing I see, soul or not, and I remember what it was like, down in The Pit. I remember the joy I felt each time I got to bite into a new soul. We’ve all been there. Right?”

He moved, pulling the dagger back and throwing his arms out, spinning in a slow circle as the demons around him nodded and agreed. It wouldn’t take too long to destroy them all, but Hell was huge and Dean needed to know he’d got rid of the ones who’d really opposed him. 

He couldn’t be fighting a war on two fronts, and Cas was already going to be a challenge.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Dean said, as his spin took him back to facing the thing on its knees. It would help if it wasn’t wearing someone who looked about as dangerous and evil as a teddy-bear, with kindly eyes and a thick cardigan and probably a woodwork shop for making toys for orphans or some shit. “I’m thinking one of us gets to do some rending here. Maybe you. Who knows?”

The demons around him laughed, and the ones being held captive snarled, but Dean kept his focus on the one in front of him. This would send a message. If watching Crowley over those months as a demon had told Dean anything, it was that the message had to be confident. It had to be clear. That was almost more important than what the message was. 

“Let him go,” he said. “Give him a blade. Let’s see what this one’s got.”

The demon lurched forward as it was released, falling onto its hands and knees at Dean’s feet. A blade hit the ground by its right hand and it gasped, scrabbling for the thing and missing twice. 

“Gonna have to do better than that,” Dean said. He nudged the blade with the toe of his boot, pushing it into the demon’s hand. “Take it. Get up. Fight.”

He had no idea what expression he had on his face, not really, but he could feel the curl to his upper lip. His demonic self wound in spirals within him. Whatever he looked like, the creature before him rose unsteadily, its smoke agitated. 

“You’re no Knight,” it spat, or tried to. It came out more doddering than defiant. “You’re no King!”

“Prove it,” Dean said. “Prove I’m not worthy. I have to pull a sword from every single one of your twitching corpses, then that’s just what I’ll do.”

The demon lunged. Dean grinned, and went to work.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back to short chapter of this one again. Enjoy.

Sam watched Bela, but the demon didn’t seem to be doing anything other than staring at the sigils on the chamber walls. She had her arms crossed and her head tipped back, her hair falling neatly and elegantly in a way that made her seem like she’d risen from the rack fully composed, without any of the struggle Dean had with the demonic influences in his life. She wasn’t plotting an ambush for Dean, as far as Sam could tell, or plotting a way to trap them for when Dean came back. He didn’t really know what she was doing. 

“She isn’t going to betray us,” Hannah said from beside him. 

Sam grimaced and refolded his arms. He hadn’t known Hannah was right next to him.

“Yeah, I get that,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Hannah said. “You believe she probably won’t betray me. From what Castiel said when we were on the road together, I expected you and your brother to have some issues with trusting Bela, and me. But haven’t we already shown we’re on the same side in this?”

“What exactly did Cas say?” Sam asked. 

Images of times he’d done or said anything that might push Cas away, or put the angel’s objectives behind their own, trickled into his mind. It wasn’t a case of not trusting Cas. Hadn’t been for years, and even then Sam had seen that Cas’ heart was in the right place. It wasn’t even thinking Cas’ goals were insignificant. It was just… It was just their mission always seemed so urgent, and the tasks Cas set himself so often seemed distant. Other. But it wasn’t a lack of trust. 

“You see yourselves as being against the world,” Hannah said. “And Dean especially has a great deal of trouble with anyone who doesn’t support the plan he currently thinks is right. It’s…angelic, almost. In a way.”

“Angelic?” Sam asked. The idea of Dean being angelic was alien, but he could remember a time when it hadn’t been, when Sam had spent uncomfortable hours comparing his own demon-infected self with his brother’s link to angels. An angel, anyway. “Dean? He’s literally a demon heir-apparent right now.”

Hannah shrugged. 

“Lucifer was heir-apparent to Heaven,” she said, “up until he wasn’t.”

A bell rang through the chamber, deep and sonorous, and Bela span to face them, her eyes wide. 

“He’s on his way back,” she said. “You need to decide which plan to go with. We don’t have a lot of time here, and if we choose the wrong approach-”

“Trust me,” Sam said. “This will work.”

And he moved to stand in the middle of the chamber, back straight and head up. He saw Hannah cast a look at Castiel before moving to stand by Bela, half a step behind and with no sign of her blade. Sam just had time for a last flash of doubt he certainly wasn’t going to admit to before movement at the entrance resolved itself into a cluster of demons, Dean in their midst. 

His brother looked…at ease. Confident. There was no sign of the worry or weariness that could afflict Dean, and his stride was loose, relaxed. He looked every inch at home. Time for a second burst of worry, then. This plan might work whether Dean was in this thing fully or not, but Sam wasn’t keen on a real showdown. 

He waited in silence, waited as Dean turned his head, eyes narrowing, and met Sam’s gaze. The smirk returned after a moment, but Sam saw it falter. 

“Sammy,” Dean called, turning his steps in Sam’s direction and covering the ground less quickly than he normally would. Probably not wanting the demons to think there was any panic there. “You drop by for a family dinner I forget about? Or did you just come down here to congratulate me on my new gig?”

Sam kept his mouth shut, but he adjusted his stance.

“What? Nothing to say? Did someone tear out your tongue while you were waiting?” Dean swung around, and he must see Hannah, but he showed no sign of it. “Bela? You cut out my brother’s tongue?”

“No,” Bela said. “I’ve been babysitting your angel.”

“And picking up your own,” Dean said, winking. “Guess that’s what happens when you’re the boss, hey? Everyone wants what you have. Angels - the cool new fashion accessory of the season. Now, don’t all of the rest of you go thinking you’re getting one for Christmas.”

The snickering around Dean should have been enough to send the guy running for that stone lamp and humanity, but instead he seemed to be basking in it.

“You want to know why I’m really here?” Sam asked. 

Dean turned back, his eyebrows raised.

“Well, sure,” he said. “Is it fun?”

“I’m here for my throne,” Sam said. He threw out his arms and let himself stand to his full height, eyes fixed on his brother. “Lucifer picked me. You were just Alastair’s pet project.”

Dean froze for a second, then smiled, his lip curling up at one side in a way that had nothing to do with humor, nodding as though Sam had just brought up some interesting detail in a casual conversation.

“Point, there, Sammy. Gotta tell you, though, not seeing how being picked by Lucifer makes this gig any more yours than mine. Being a pet project for the Master of the Pit is a step or two above being a prom dress, you want my view on it.”

Sam opened his mouth, but Dean pointed at him, or rather he pointed the blade in his hand at Sam, and it was all too obviously coated in blood. Sam shut his mouth again, and waited.

“Matter of fact,” Dean said, taking a step closer as the demons around him watched with a hungry glee, I seem to recall I was picked by Alastair and by Cain. Hell, by Crowley, too. So I got all kinds of votes. And what have you got? Bela’s pet angel and a sense of righteous self-importance gonna get you the win, little brother? That what you think? Because Lucifer only ever wanted to use you. He was fattening you up to be the Christmas goose. And you ain’t got it in you to beat me. No demon blood in your veins now. And what are you without it? Just a little boy who lost every woman he ever loved.”

Black flashed across Dean’s eyes, and Sam only just caught himself before he flinched. He stood his ground as Dean took another step, his stance closer to stalking than before. Hell, it was close to the slink of a hunter on the prowl, secure in the knowledge his prey had no chance of escape. Sam lifted his chin and refused to move. 

“You lost the people you loved, too, Dean,” Sam said. “We both lost Mom. And we both lost Jo, and Ellen.” He paused, swallowing. “We both lost Dad. We both lost Bobby. You’re the one can’t stand the thought of anyone walking away from him. That why you’ve got Cas strapped to that chair? You think he’d leave you if you didn’t?”

“Cas ain’t going anywhere,” Dean said. Snapped. “And we both lost people. So what? You think the power of loss is going to let you beat me?”

“I think it’s going to make sure you don’t take Cas from me, too,” Sam said. “If the only way to do that is to fight you, to take the throne from you, then that’s what I’ll do.”

And that looked a lot like jealousy on Dean’s face. It was just a flash, there and gone, but it was strong. 

“Cas ain’t yours,” he said, and struck.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Expat's becoming void day.

With his bonds loosened, Castiel’s vision swam. It was as though his eyes couldn’t quite focus, not for more than a moment or two, so that he saw smoke billow up in Dean, then it was gone, then he caught a flash of Dean’s colors, amber and green twining around each other, then nothing again but the shell of what Dean was.

He could see the way Dean moved, fluid and forceful, with the kind of lounging grace of a panther. 

Sam stumbled back as Dean reached him, slashing with that knife so that Castiel was certain, just for a moment, that Dean had caught Sam. Wounded him. 

Testing the bond, Castiel prepared to push himself from the throne. Dean was his heart, but Sam was family, too, and Castiel had lost enough family. He wasn’t losing Sam, not even for Dean. 

Hannah’s look stopped him, just as he reached the point where one more inch would snap him free. Holding Castiel’s gaze just for a moment, she shook her head and mouthed a word in Enochian. Wait. 

He trusted Hannah, of course he did, but Dean was closing on Sam again, his eyes black and shining, and if Castiel risked staying where he was and Sam died… Hannah didn’t understand the importance of either brother, not really. She would save them for Castiel’s sake, he was sure, if she could, but he doubted they’d be high enough on her list if she saw a chance to use the brothers’ fight as a cover to spirit Bela away. 

Frowning, Hannah mouthed the word again, and Castiel sagged back. He would give her a few moments, but no more. 

A roar of outrage pulled his attention fully back to Sam and Dean, to see Dean recoiling, holding his wrist. The knife hit the floor, clattering an echo in the chamber. Dean snarled, his lip curling, but there was shock there as well as anger. Wariness, even.

“How…?” he bit out. He paused, his head tilting as though he needed to see Sam from a different angle, and the expression that followed was chilling. “Where’d you get the demon blood, Sammy? You been snacking on one of my guys?”

The flick of Dean’s eyes to Bella and back to Sam was quick, but Castiel wasn’t the only one who noticed. Sam shifted, drawing Dean’s attention more fully, and Hannah’s wings flared. Bella herself stood her ground near Hannah, her chin up and her gaze fierce. From his position, Castiel could see the faint smear of blood on Bella’s arm where they didn’t wipe her skin quite clean. 

Whether Dean noticed that or he was just making one of those leaps of intuition that neither Sam nor Castiel could manage, there was certainty in his next words.

“Bella. You think if I’d gotten her into bed, she’d have been on my side of this?”

And there was the smirk, which somehow Dean managed to express through his whole body, his lip quirking in a different way and his body language changing. Castiel had seen him use that exact move when trying to infuriate an opponent, the sarcastic, irreverent joker who was going to put a bullet in whoever he was currently winding up.

Hannah, less well versed in Dean, took a step forward, but Bella’s hand on her arm stopped her. 

“You’d be the one switching sides,” Bella called out, and her smirk was almost as good as Dean’s. If Castiel couldn’t see how tightly she gripped Hannah’s arm, he might even have believed it. 

“You think you’re that good, sweetheart?” Dean asked. 

The low, simmering heat in his voice was part warning, part invitation, and Castiel wondered if that, too, was a kind of weapon. 

“Leave her out of it,” Sam said. “Leave them all out of it. This is between you and me. It’s always been between you and me.”

“As above, so below, little brother?” Dean asked. 

He still held his wrist wrapped in his other hand, but it no longer looked like he was cradling an injury. Dean may use Ruby’s knife or the First Blade or any other special weapon, and use them well, but he didn’t need them. The only weapon Dean really needed was Dean, and one little cut wasn’t going to change that. 

Behind Dean, the demons clustered in a group, expressions rapt. As Castiel’s vision flickered between frequencies, he saw the smoke of them curl and coil in what had to be a mix of fear and excitement. Then again, if they had really been looking to change Dean back into a Knight, a full one this time, they already had to be desperate for a leader. Whichever brother won here, they’d be able to claim one. If not a Knight, if not Cain’s Heir, then a Boy King. 

But the brothers hadn’t fought each other over the Earth, not even when Heaven itself had commanded it. Castiel wasn’t about to let them fight each other over Hell. 

Sam thrust out an arm, hand raised and palm pointed at Dean. To Castiel’s eyes, the blast of power was a series of concentric rings, tearing at the reality around it. It caught Dean square in the chest, knocking him back, but Dean was stronger now than Alastair had been. He kept his feet, his eyes flickering from black to green to black, and the smoke inside him became a torrent. 

If this particular plan was to work, Sam had to time this right. So did Castiel. He caught Bela’s eye and saw her nod. 

As Dean closed on Sam, Castiel flexed, pushing the bonds further. He extended his angelic limbs as Sam brought up his left hand, closed around something, and he felt the first bond snap as Dean’s lunge brought him into contact with what Sam held. 

The effect was more immediate this time. Dean’s skin flooded with marks, sigils inking themselves into being in an instant. Dean drew to a juddering halt, his eyes wide and his lips parted.

“What have you…?” he grated out.

Castiel reached Dean as he staggered back, pain and disbelief on his face, and caught him before his knees buckled. Behind Sam, Bela and Hannah crowded close, each holding a blade. 

So far, the demons were held by shock and confusion, but that wouldn’t last for long. Seeing their newly acquired King in the arms of the angel they’d wanted torn apart, the demons would take action soon. 

“Sam?” Castiel asked.

Sam held up his hands, now cradling the stone lamp between them. 

“We’re putting the genie back in the lamp, Dean,” he said. “And we’re taking you home.”

This was the part they were least sure of, in many ways. The sigils Hannah had drawn on Sam’s hand could easily have been smudged in the fight, or might not work to get him out, let alone the rest of them. Hannah was intelligent and intent, but she lacked Castiel’s eons of work with such things.

Behind him, he saw one demon move, saw the panic that made it so dangerous, and gripped Dean more tightly.

“Sam, now!” he said.

Hannah and Bella each set a hand on Sam’s shoulders, and Castiel pushed Dean closer to his brother. Sam’s hand connected with the side of Dean’s face in an oddly tender gesture for something done so quickly and under such circumstances. But then, Castiel had often noticed the brothers could be gentle at the strangest of times. He thought it was part of how they hadn’t been broken entirely by their lives.

A moment later, Castiel felt the tug deep in his Grace, and the hellspace around him wavered. If this worked, they’d find themselves back in the Bunker, with Dean undergoing the transition back to human. They’d come up with a new plan to stop the demons from taking him again. 

Under his hands, Castiel felt the smoke in Dean twist and writhe, and told himself it was part of the process. It was. They would have Dean back soon. He would have his Dean back soon.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if this is going to be what you requested, ExpatGirl, but I am giving the world Hannah/Bela, so there's that.


End file.
